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THE LIFE OF MRS. NORTON 




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THE LIFE OF 
MRS. NORTON 

BY MISS JANE GRAY PERKINS 



WITH PORTRAITS 



LONDON 
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W. 

1909 



7- 






PRINTED BY 
HAZELL, WATSON AND VINEY, LD. 
LONDON AND AYLESBURY. 



NOTE 

For the materials which make the foundation of this 
biography my thanks are due first to members of Mrs. 
Norton's own family — her grandson, Lord Grantley, 
whose permission made it possible for me to use 
her letters, both those already published and those 
which appear for the first time in these pages ; 
her granddaughter, the Hon. Carlotta Norton ; her 
niece. Lady Guendolen Ramsden ; and Mrs. Sheridan 
of Frampton Court; whose personal recollections of 
Mrs. Norton and kind hospitality in letting me see 
a scrap-book and certain family pictures have greatly 
aided me in my work. 

I must also thank the directors of the Library in the 
British Museum for their courtesy in allowing me the 
privileges of this invaluable collection, at a time when 
the condition of the building, while undergoing repairs, 
might have furnished adequate excuse for denying 
those privileges to the passing stranger certainly, if 
not to the regular reader. 

I wish also to express my obligations to Mr. Murray, 
who kindly allowed me to use several hitherto unpub- 
lished letters from Mrs. Norton to his grandfather 
written between the years 1834-8. 

For the great mass of my material, however, I find 
it difficult to make any adequate acknowledgment, 
so rich and so varied is the treasure which English 



vi NOTE 

writers of biography and letters have expended upon 
the period and personages especially included in this 
biography. 

But I can at least thank those publishers who have 
been most zealous to provide the supply from which I 
have obtained the greater number of the letters and an 
even greater part of the facts on which this book 
depends, I wish especially to mention in this connec- 
tion my own publisher (Mr. John Murray of Albemarle 
Street), Messrs. Longman, Green & Co., Messrs. Mac- 
millan, Messrs. Smith, Elder Sc Co., and Sir Isaac 
Pitman. 

J. G. P. 

August, 1909. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

NOTE V 



INTRODUCTION xiii 

CHAPTER I 

BIRTH AND SCHOOLDAYS — GEORGE NORTON . . I 

CHAPTER II 

MARRIAGE II 

CHAPTER III 
"the sorrows OF ROSALIE" — **THE UNDYING ONE " 

— "social successes" 21 

CHAPTER IV 
literature and politics 37 

CHAPTER V 

GEORGE NORTON — FAMILY LETTERS .... 48 

vii b 



viii CONTENTS 



CHAPTER VI 

PAGE 

TRIP ABROAD— BRINSLEY's MARRIAGE ... 58 



CHAPTER Vn 

THE WIFE — MRS. NORTON LEAVES HER HUSBAND . 70 

CHAPTER Vni 

THE MELBOURNE TRIAL — HER STRUGGLE FOR THE 

POSSESSION OF HER CHILDREN .... 89 

CHAPTER IX 

EFFORTS TO MAKE HER OWN LIVING — A VOICE FROM 

THE FACTORIES IO4 

CHAPTER X 
THE ENGLISH LAW — ACCESSION OF QUEEN VICTORIA II 9 

CHAPTER XI 
THE INFANT CUSTODY BILL I30 

CHAPTER XII 

INFANT CUSTODY BILL — HER LETTER TO THE LORD 

CHANCELLOR — VISIT TO ITALY . . . . I48 

CHAPTER XIII 

PETITION TO THE LORD CHANCELLOR — DEATH OF 

WILLIAM 159 



CONTENTS ix 

CHAPTER XIV 

FACE 

THE DREAM — THE CHILD OF THE ISLANDS — FISHER's 

DRAWING-ROOM SCRAP BOOK . . . .174 

CHAPTER XV 

NEW FRIENDS — KINGLAKE — THE DUFF GORDONS — 
SIDNEY HERBERT — THE REPEAL OF THE CORN 
LAWS — RELATIONS WITH HER CHILDREN . . I9I 

CHAPTER XVI 

NEW QUARREL WITH HER HUSBAND — FLETCHER's 

ILLNESS — DEATH OF LORD MELBOURNE . . 206 

CHAPTER XVII 
STIRLING OF KEIR — " STUART OF DUNLEATH " . 21$ 

CHAPTER XVIII 
LIFE ABROAD — LAST QUARREL WITH HER HUSBAND 22$ 

CHAPTER XIX 

PAMPHLET ON " ENGLISH LAWS FOR WOMEN " AND 

" LETTER TO THE QUEEN " .... 238 

CHAPTER XX 
BRINSLEy's MARRIAGE — A LONDON SEASON . . 252 

CHAPTER XXI 

DEATH OF FLETCHER — " THE LADY OF LA GARAYE " 

— " LOST AND SAVED " 264 



X CONTENTS 

CHAPTER XXII 

PAGE 

LAST YEARS — DEATH OF GEORGE NORTON — SECOND 

MARRIAGE — DEATH 283 

LIST OF MRS. NORTON'S WRITINGS . . 299 
LIST OF MRS. NORTON'S SONGS . . . 300 
INDEX 303 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



MRS. NORTON 

After the painting by John Hayter (photogravure). 



Frontispiece 



FACING PAGE 

MRS. NORTON 20 

From a lithograph at Chatsworth. 

MRS. NORTON 46 

After the portrait by John Hayter. 

MRS. NORTON 76 

From a pen-and-ink sketch. 

MRS. NORTON 1 74 

From an engraving by F. C. Lewis, after the drawing by Sir Edwin Landseer, R.A. 

MRS. SHERIDAN ......... 214 

From the drawing by John Hayter (photogravure). 

MRS. NORTON 258 

From a drawing by Mrs. Munro-Fergusan. 

MRS. NORTON 296 

From a bust. 



INTRODUCTION 

Mrs. Norton is a personage whose reputation as 
a poetess and a writer stood much higher among 
our grandmothers than it does to-day. To-day, in- 
deed, the greater part of her writing is so much 
out of fashion as to be nearly out of print, and she 
herself is considered less as an author than as a 
beautiful, unfortunate woman, the target of a great 
deal of cruel scandal, ill remembered, but never quite 
forgotten. 

Her poetry, perhaps, deserves its fate ; it is, indeed, 
too intimate a part of herself, too dependent on 
the passing glamour of her beauty, to be expected 
to survive her. But her novels deserve another 
chance ; and on this score more consideration is 
due to her than has been accorded by her own 
generation. And the lyric touch, too often wanting 
in her verses, is never lacking in her life ; her own 
story, told in her own dramatic words, is her real 
contribution to the literature of her century. This 
story, though often told in part, and too often 
obscured or exaggerated by half-truths or whole 
scandals, has never yet been fairly or adequately 
narrated. 

And yet it would seem that no survey of English 
social and literary conditions during the first fifty 
years of the nineteenth century could be complete 



xiv INTRODUCTION 

without it The generous, woman's influence has left 
too deep a mark, not only on the men and manners, 
but upon the very laws of her time, to let her be 
entirely forgotten. She can never be forgotten, if 
only because the mere tradition of her is so deeply 
embedded in the literary remains of the nineteenth 
century. 

It is only fair, then, that she should be adequately 
remembered, not only for her misfortunes, but for 
the real service she rendered to her own kind, the 
gallant fight she waged against most cruel con- 
ditions — conditions which her own extraordinary 
experience, her passionate energy of resistance, did 
much to make impossible, almost inconceivable to-day. 

The following pages are an effort to render justice 
to her ; to give her something like her real value 
among people to whom her name and the poorest 
part of her fame are already vaguely familiar. 



LIFE OF MRS. NORTON 

CHAPTER I 

BIRTH AND SCHOOLDAYS — GEORGE NORTON 

The subject of this biography was the third child 
of Tom Sheridan ; and therefore a granddaughter of 
the great Sheridan by his first wife, the beautiful Miss 
Linley, whose almost impossible loveliness has been 
preserved for us to this day by some of the most 
beautiful paintings of Reynolds and Gainsborough. 

Tom Sheridan's wife was a Scotswoman ; her 
parents were James Callander of Craigforth, after- 
wards Campbell of Ardkinglass, Argyllshire, and his 
third wife, the Lady Elizabeth Macdonnell, sister of 
the Earl of Antrim, an Irish peer. 

She had probably met her young husband first in 
Edinburgh, where he was stationed for some years on 
the staff" of the Earl of Moira, but on their marriage, 
in November 1805, they came to live in London 
(Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square), where their elder 
children were born. The great Sheridan was then at 
the height of his fortune, having passionately mourned 
but quickly recovered from the loss of his beautiful 
first wife, and married again, in 1795, a woman much 
younger than himself, Miss Esther Ogle, daughter of 
the Dean of Winchester, by whom he had a second 
son, Charles, born January 14, 1796. This second 
connection, however, did not interfere with his 

I 



2 BIRTH AND SCHOOLDAYS [chap, i 

interest in his " grandchicks," as he called Tom's 
children. 

The eldest of these was a boy, named Richard 
Brinsley, after him. Next came Helen, born 1807, 
followed by Caroline, the second daughter, born 
March 22, 1808. This date, at least, seems to me 
most likely to be the correct one, though there are 
two others given by family authority: 1809, according 
to Lord Dufferin in his Life of his mother, Helen 
Sheridan, and 18 10, found in records left by Mrs. 
Norton's second husband, Sir William Stirling- 
Maxwell. 

The family tradition has it that Mrs. Norton was 
a queer, dark-looking, little baby, with quantities of 
black hair. There is a story of her, at three years 
old, brought in and set up on a table to be shown off 
to her grandfather, the great Sheridan ; sitting there 
frightened out of her wits, staring at him with enor- 
mous black eyes, with her hair half concealing her 
face, till at last he gave utterance upon her : " Well, 
that is not a child I would care to meet in a dark 
wood ! " 

By that time, however, her family's fortune was 
somewhat in eclipse. On February 24, 1809, the old 
Drury Lane Theatre was destroyed by fire, and with 
it the greater part of her father's income and her 
grandfather's possessions. And very soon after she 
was born, Tom Sheridan began to show signs of the 
fatal disease inherited from his beautiful mother. All 
the later years of his life were spent in a vain search 
for health, a winter in Ireland, a year in Malta, till at 
last, in the autumn of 181 3, he was appointed, through 
the influence of his father's old friend, the Duke of 
York, to a colonial secretaryship at the Cape of Good 
Hope, which he accepted in a vain belief that the 
climate would save, or at least prolong, his life. His 
wife and eldest daughter, afterwards Lady Dufferin, 
accompanied him on this mission. The other children, 
all very little, were left behind in Scotland, at Ard- 



i8i7j DEATH OF TOM SHERIDAN 3 

kinglass, their mother's old home, in the care of their 
mother's two unmarried sisters, Georgiana and Fanny, 
afterwards the wife of Sir James Graham. 

It happens, therefore, that many of Mrs. Norton's 
earliest memories and associations were connected 
with Scotland, a land which she knew and loved 
better than either England or Ireland, in spite of the 
sentimental traditions which bound her, by name at 
least, to the latter country, and a long life lived largely 
in the former. 

Her first instructor was a Scotsman ^ of the name 
of Wilson ; her first lessons were shared with the 
young son of Lord Kinnaird, an old friend of both her 
father and mother, whose place at Glenrossie, all 
through her little childhood, was like another home. 

There is a letter of Mrs. Sheridan's, written to 
her sisters in Ardkinglass from Madeira, on her way 
to the Cape with her husband, describing all this 
little brood of children from whom she was parting so 
reluctantly and so fruitlessly as it turned out, for the 
appointment at the Cape had come too late to save 
Tom Sheridan's life. He rallied at first, indeed, and 
for a time his friends had hopes for his recovery, but 
only for a time. He died on September 12, 18 16, 
leaving his wife a widow with seven little children, 
of whom the youngest, Charles, and probably Frank 
were born at the Cape. 

A letter of Charles Sheridan, senior, always a 
devoted friend to his half-brother's wife and young 
family, tells of their return to England in the transport 
Albion in the autumn of 18 17. Already he speaks 
of his sister-in-law in terms of aff'ectionate admira- 
tion : " Her life has been a course of unparalleled 
devotion and attachment to my poor brother." 

The young widow set herself at once to the difficult 

task of gathering her little children together and 

making a home for herself and them out of the 

remnant of her husband's fortune. Her father-in-law 

^ Article in Colburn's New Monthly Magazine, 1831. 



4 BIRTH AND SCHOOLDAYS [chap, i 

had died the preceding summer, deeply in debt ; 
according to some accounts, in actual want. But his 
death had done more than his later life, perhaps, to 
revive the glory of his name. His old friend Frederick 
Duke of York lost no time in presenting his son's 
widow with a home in Hampton Court, 

The whole west wing of the Court was given up to 
these private apartments, whose favoured occupants, 
not necessarily known to one another, were almost 
always in some sort of relation to the Royal family. 
The half-public, wholly decorous form of life necessary 
for people whose home is in a royal palace, subject to 
royal visits, the luxury of space, the beautiful grounds 
and gardens, perfectly ordered by a service with 
which the occupants had nothing to do, were as far 
removed as anything we can imagine from the genteel 
poverty which might so easily have been the fate of 
the young Sheridans. Here for several years the 
family lived together, and laid the foundations for 
that close and affectionate companionship so remark- 
able in their later years. They must have been an 
unusual group of children, extraordinarily good- 
looking, with dark hair and glowing colour and 
splendid eyes, real Irish blue as in the case of Brinsley, 
the eldest, and Georgie, the youngest daughter, after- 
wards the beautiful Duchess of Somerset ; or dark as 
night, like Caroline's. They were all clever, gay- 
tempered, endowed even in childhood with those social 
gifts which distinguished them in later years. 

To quote again from the article I have already 
cited :* 

" They were even in the nursery especially fond of 
private theatricals, and almost every Saturday and 
half-holiday was spent in preparing extemporary 
plays ; tragedies were preferred, Turkish, so that they 
might wear a turband [^sic]. Five minutes were 
allowed to an improvised speech to each actor, and 

* Colburn's New Monthly Magazine^ 1831. 



i8i7] PRIVATE THEATRICALS 5 

ten minutes for Caroline to prepare her own essays 
at dramatic eloquence." 

They all sang, they all drew, they were all pre- 
cocious scribblers — in this last amusement, even in 
those days, Helen and Caroline usually taking the 
lead. When only eleven years old the latter received 
as a present from Lady Westmorland a child's 
illustrated book — one of a series called the Dandy 
books, full of the grotesque adventures of the beings 
so named, to caricature the real London dandies 
of that time. Instantly the two older girls fell upon 
it and plagiarised it with sketches and rhymes of their 
own. The result was "The Dandies' Rout," so pre- 
cociously effective that a certain bookseller named 
Marshall was willing to publish it at the moderate 
reward of fifty gift copies for the authors. Years 
afterwards, looking over children's picture-books for 
her own little boy, Mrs. Norton was enchanted to find 
one left over from this her first literary venture, long 
out of print. We may be sure the story never lost by 
her telling of it. 

Henrietta Callander, the mother of all these spirited, 
gifted children, was herself a woman of more than 
usual beauty and intelligence : the first, generally 
acknowledged; the second, not so instantly appreciated 
under the veil of an excessive, shy reserve, a gentle, 
almost timid manner, an extreme consideration for 
every one about her, which last quality however did 
not interfere with a habit of discriminating observa- 
tion of the people with whom she came in daily 
contact, their weaknesses, their inconsistencies, their 
absurdities ; and she had the rarer power of turning 
it all from mere raw material into what one may call 
literary impressions, which must have been part of 
the family inheritance for a long time before either 
she or her more famous daughter thought of turning 
it into gain. 

She published three or four short stories of fashion- 



6 BIRTH AND SCHOOLDAYS [chap, i 

able life (all now out of print), all rather stiff with the 
style of the late eighteenth century, but none without 
a certain charm and wit which make them fairly read- 
able to-day. " Carwell," her most ambitious effort, is 
in quite another vein, and shows real imagination in 
peopling the dark courts and side-alleys of the author's 
own familiar Westminster with secret lives and 
hazards ; and a real knowledge and sympathy with 
the sufferings and conditions of the poor. 

Her daughter Caroline thus perpetuates the childish 
impression she retained of this mother : 

" In thy black weeds, and coif of widow's woe ; 
Thy dark expressive eyes all dim and clouded 
By that deep wretchedness the lonely know ; 
Stifling thy grief, to hear some weary task 
Conned by unwilling lips, with listless air. 
Hoarding thy means, lest future need might ask 
More than the widow's pittance then could spare. 
Hidden, forgotten by the great and gay, 
Enduring sorrow, not by fits and starts, 
But the long self-denial, day by day, 
Alone amidst thy brood of careless hearts ! 
Striving to guide, to teach, or to restrain 
The young rebellious spirits crowding round, 
Who saw not, knew not, felt not for thy pain, 
And could not comfort — yet had power to wound 1 " ' 

There is a delightful picture of her in the possession 
of one of her descendants, in coloured crayons, with 
bunches of soft dark hair, slightly covered by the 
most graceful of lace caps tied under her chin, the 
head charmingly tilted, so that the dark eyes look 
down from the wall at one a little sideways ; full, firm 
lips slightly smiling, a face not less sweet because so 
full of delicate intelligence. 

But indeed she had need of this and all the other 
qualities Heaven had given her to carry out the task 
with which she found herself burdened while still a 
very young woman, at her husband's death ; the task 

' The Dream^ published in 1840. 



1825] SEPARATIONS 7 

of bringing up and educating seven little children, 
four boys and three girls, on very small resources, of 
finding professions for her sons and marrying her 
daughters. One son she lost, while he was still a 
midshipman in the Royal Navy ; but the other three 
grew up, and places were found for all of them 
in the public service, through the Sheridan or quite 
as often through her own family influence. Her 
three daughters she brought out one after another 
into the best London society and married, portionless 
as they were, to men of family and title, the youngest 
brilliantly. 

Caroline was the only one of these daughters who 
was sent away from home for part of her education, to 
a little school between Shalford and Wonersh, in 
Surrey, 

" One thing I remember that mamma said to Caro- 
line when she went to school," writes Georgiana 
Sheridan, some years later to her elder brother in India, 
" * Ah, when once the branches of a family are divided, 
they seldom are all united again.' And it was quite 
true ; we never did see a Christmas all together again, 
Caroline went to school, you to Harford ; you never 
all of you had holidays at the same time. And then 
poor little Tommy went to sea, and so, though I 
sincerely hope to see you again, my dear Brinny, yet 
I never can forget at Christmas or at any other time 
when we used to be so merry together, that saying of 
mamma's, and that we never can all meet together 
again, and I hate the look of the nursery where there 
used to be so many merry faces and cheerful voices," 

It was, perhaps, not so much for education, as for 
a certain need of discipline, that Caroline was sent 
away from the little circle at home. For it is evident 
that the flame of the Sheridan genius had begun to 
burn hotly in her very early, exciting her to wild 
rebellion, passionate reactions of feeling, which her 
grave Scottish mother could understand as little as she 
could manage them. Yet she was already a person of 



8 BIRTH AND SCHOOLDAYS [chap, i 

more than schoolgirl attainments ; she wrote songs 
with admirable facility, and sang them to her own 
music in a young untrained voice, already a soft con- 
tralto ; she drew very well, and besides her own and her 
sister's venture of "The Dandies' Rout," she had also 
tried her wings in more extended flights, a long love 
poem in Spenserian stanza, " Amouivada and Sebas- 
tian," begun and never finished, whose scene is laid in 
America, an early instance of that constant interest 
and liking for persons and things beyond the Atlantic 
which we find in her to the end of her life. 

She was even then burning to become some day 
very famous by her writings ; as a fittle girl this desire 
had been awakened in her by the sight of her uncle, 
Mr. Charles Sheridan, at work in his study over a 
collection of Romaic songs, which he was translating 
from the original, and which were afterwards published 
by Longmans. " I invariably left his study," says she, 
in a letter to an intimate friend, " with an enthusiastic 
determination to write a long poem of my own." 

It was of this, her first long poem, that she was 
already dreaming when she went to school at Wonersh. 
It was the Surrey landscape and the little cottages 
round Guildford that were to make its local colour, 
as far as it can be said to have any of that very modern 
quality ; and the turnpike gate on the road from Guild- 
ford to Shalford was the scene of its inspiration. But 
there were other things beside poetry to distract 
her mind from school books during her stay in 
Wonersh. 

The most important estate in this particular part of 
Surrey, at that time, was Wonersh Park, the property 
of Fletcher, third Lord Grantley, a peerage no older 
than the middle of the preceding century, when it 
had been bestowed on a certain Fletcher Norton for 
his services as Speaker of the House of Commons 
(1769-82). But the family — of Yorkshire originally, 
and still holding in Yorkshire its principal estates — 
boasted an antiquity far superior to the title extending 



1825] WONERSH PARK 9 

back beyond the Wars of the Roses ; Wordsworth's 
poem, "The Last of the Nortons," being claimed by 
them as a tradition of their own race. 

Fletcher, the holder of the title when Caroline 
Sheridan first came to Wonersh, had been for some 
time married to the beautiful daughter of the painter, 
Sir William Beechey, but there were no children, and, 
though Lord and Lady Grantley were both still young, 
there was little likelihood of there ever being any, so 
estranged were the relations of husband and wife. 
There was no open breach between them, however ; 
when she was not amusing herself at Brighton she 
was at Wonersh, surrounded by various members of 
her husband's family — his Scottish mother, his un- 
married sisters, his brother George, who was by this 
time very generally looked upon as his heir. 

It was a pleasant old place, not very large, but 
stately and dignified, the main part an old Elizabethan 
manor house, the two wings added by the first and 
third Lords Grantley respectively. The great brick 
wall which still encloses the place on its side next the 
village was also the work of Fletcher, the third lord, 
and in those days just completed, in all the bare ugli- 
ness of crude masonry. Its great double Gothic gates, 
kept always closed during the life of its builder, gave 
directly upon the small gravelled court in which the 
old house stood. The real facade of the building, 
however, looked the other way, towards green lawns 
studded with beautiful trees, a great cedar, an old 
sun-dial in the midst of garden-beds full of flowers, 
and a pretty stream, a branch of the Wey, winding off 
into the distance. 

Mrs. Norton thus describes her first meetings 
with the man who was afterwards to become her 
husband. 

" He was the brother of Lord Grantley, and the 
governess to whose care I was confided happening to 
be the sister to Lord Grantley's agent, the female 
members of the Norton family, from courtesy to this 

2 



lo BIRTH AND SCHOOLDAYS [chap, i 

lady, invited her and such of her pupils as she chose 
to accompany her, to Lord Grantley's house. A sister 
of Mr. Norton's, an eccentric person who affected 
masculine habits and played a little on the violin, 
amused herself with my early verses and my love of 
music, and took more notice of me than of my com- 
panions. The occasions on which I saw this lady 
were not frequent ; and still more rare were those on 
which I had also seen her brother ; it was therefore 
with a feeling of mere astonishment, that I received 
from my governess the intelligence that she thought it 
right to refuse me the indulgence of accompanying her 
again to Lord Grantley's till she had heard from my 
mother ; as Mr. Norton had professed his intention of 
asking me in marriage." ^ 

The gentleman in question was at that time a brief- 
less barrister of about twenty-five, well-made, though 
not tall, good-looking, with a fine ruddy complexion ; 
but rather dull and slow and lazy, and late for every- 
thing, till he at last gained the cognomen, not worn so 
threadbare then as now, of the " late George Norton." 
He lost no time, however, in proposing to Mrs. Sheridan 
for her daughter's hand ; not with immediate success 
indeed. But he was encouraged to hope, to wait, till 
the young lady was a little older. He did wait, there- 
fore, nearly three years. 

' "English Laws for Women in the Nineteenth Century," pub- 
lished 1854. 



CHAPTER II 

MARRIAGE 

Mrs. Sheridan took a house in Great George Street, 
Westminster, as soon as her eldest daughter arrived 
at marriageable age, and for some time to come it 
was in town rather than at Hampton Court that she 
spent the greater part of the year. Helen Sheridan, 
the first of those three beautiful sisters to be intro- 
duced into society, while still a girl of seventeen, in 
her first season, captivated the heart of Price Black- 
wood, a young officer in the Royal Navy. It was 
not a brilliant match. The young man's father, 
indeed, was heir to the Irish peerage of Dufferin, 
but he himself had nothing but his own very 
slender pay, and his family were all opposed to the 
connection. 

He was too much in love, however, to be influ- 
enced by their opposition when once he had over- 
come the lady's indifference. He married Helen 
Sheridan at the end of her first London season 
and carried her off to Italy to escape the unpleasant- 
ness which might arise during his family's first 
annoyance at his disregard of their wishes. And 
now it was Caroline's turn to be introduced into 
the world. 

As handsome as, though perhaps less graceful than 
her older sister, she was more remarkable, especially 
to old family friends, for her resemblance to her 



13 MARRIAGE [chap, ii 

famous grandfather. Moore speaks of it at once in 
his Diary, May 17, 1826: 

" I had heard that the Fancy Quadrille of the 
Twelve Months that was danced at the Spitalfields 
ball last week was to be repeated to-night at Almack's ; 
but the sister of one of the Months has died since 
then, and it is given up. The Quadrille of Paysannes 
Provengales, however, was danced ; some pretty 
girls — among them a daughter of Lord Talbot — the 
Miss Buncombes, Mrs. Sheridan's second daughter, 
strikingly like old Brinsley, yet very pretty." 

He called at Mrs. Sheridan's soon after this first 
encounter, though the sky was pouring torrents, and 
sang for and with Miss Sheridan, who looked quite 
as pretty by day. He saw her later at Almack's, 
where she and eleven others, prettiest of the season's 
debutantes, took part in the belated dance of the 
Months, each bearing on her head a gilt basket of 
the flowers and fruits of her season. And here, too, 
he declares Miss Sheridan, who was August, to have 
been the handsomest of them all. 

And yet her beauty was not of the sort which is 
at its best in a very young girl. She was shy — not 
the shyness of the timid and shrinking nature, but 
what she herself later describes as — 

" sauvagerie, a feeling of not being able to amalga- 
mate with other and new associates, because of 
something in one's mind different from, and superior 
to, the common nature, which, though one feels, one 
is afraid of showing; perhaps from being instinctively 
conscious that it is an assertion of superiority (and 
consequently an insult offered to the new acquaint- 
ance) ; perhaps from that dread of sympathy which 
makes one's soul so often creep back like a snail 
into its shell, from the approach of unknown substances 
which may wound. The evidence of this shyness 
of spirit wears off, and it is better that it should, as 
it is better the feet should be hardened for walking." — 
Letter to Mrs. Shelley, Fitzgerald's " Lives of the 
Sheridans." 



1827] GEORGE NORTON 13 

Its existence, however, must have given uncertainty 
to a naturally impulsive manner, to her first inchnation 
to say everything and do everything that came into 
her head. It is not likely that her first London season 
was a time of unmixed pleasure or unmixed success 
for her, especially as it was probably cut short by her 
first real sorrow, the news of her brother's death on 
his ship in the harbour of Rio de Janeiro. There is a 
rumour too that there was some one whom she cared 
for more than for George Norton, some one who died 
or rode away, whose passing made all other men for 
the moment indifferent to her. 

George Norton did not belong to the same set of 
London society as she did. But his position in the 
world was rather improved by his being elected 
Member of Parliament for Guildford after the dissolu- 
tion of 1826. And whatever else happened or did not 
happen, he had remained faithful, or apparently faith- 
ful, to his long-declared intention of making her his 
wife. So at the end of her second season, with 
another sister coming on after her, having learned by 
this time that the world was not entirely made for 
girls like herself — girls who had neither great family 
nor great position to make up for their lack of dower — 
in a mood of momentary disgust at what the world 
had hitherto given her, or submission to her obvious 
duty to her family, touched and misled no doubt by 
the permanence of the passion she seemed to have 
excited in this one lover, she married George Norton, 
July 30, 1827, he being at that time twenty-six, and 
she nineteen. 

A long letter from Helen Blackwood written as 
soon as she heard of her sister's engagement helped 
to strengthen the younger girl's resolution in such 
a step. Mrs. Blackwood had been quite as little in 
love with her own husband when she married him 
as Caroline was with George Norton. She had found 
herself, however, exceedingly happy with him and with 
the little son who had been born to them in Italy. 



14 MARRIAGE [chap, ii 

She was sure Caroline would be happy too in following 
her example. 

Perhaps in any ordinary case she would have been 
right, but certainly no two people were less fitted for 
each other for all time than Caroline Sheridan and 
George Norton. Indeed, it seemed as if all the differ- 
ences of two opposing races and temperaments, the 
inherent misunderstanding of the Celt and the Saxon, 
lay between them, and held them apart from any real 
union. She, gifted, impetuous, stormy-tempered, with 
a reckless, specious tongue, with an instinct for taking 
the lead and getting possession of everything around 
her : magnanimous and generous, incapable of hoard- 
ing injuries and paying back old scores when once 
the first ungovernable outburst of resentment against 
them had subsided ; and he — that dangerous mixture 
which is often found in dull natures, weak but exces- 
sively obstinate and suspicious when he thought he 
was being led, narrow-spirited, intolerant, slow-witted, 
yet not silent ; rather with a certain power of nagging 
comment for everything about him that he was least 
able to understand ; not without surface kindness and 
humanity, fond of children and animals, but coarse- 
natured and self-indulgent, with a capacity for cruelty 
and brutality and slow revenge, when once convinced 
he had been aggrieved, so unlike any quality possessed 
by his wife that it seemed to confuse and stun her 
like a blow when she found herself opposed to it. 
Indeed, it actually did at times take the form of a blow. 
She did not love him, she had never loved him, and 
in the past she had made him feel it; to her own 
cost now, for he was the sort of man who required a 
woman to pay in kind for any small humiliation she 
might have inflicted on him before she became legally 
bound to him. One hardly likes to think of her 
despair during the first months of this most unhappy 
marriage. They were very poor ; he had little beyond 
his expectations and a small appointment on a Com- 
mission of Bankruptcy, obtained for him by his 



1827] EARLY UNHAPPINESS 15 

prospective mother-in-law during his period of waiting. 
His wife had brought him little more — about ;^50 
a year, her share of the pension which had descended 
on her father's death to his widow and children. So 
it was perhaps more by necessity than choice that 
they came back to London after their honeymoon, 
and spent a short time in chambers in Garden 
Court, the Temple, which Norton had occupied as a 
bachelor, with only the old woman who had always 
taken care of him there to look after them. It was 
only for a few days, before they could go on to Scot- 
land, where he was expected by his Scottish relatives 
during the shooting, but it was long enough to give 
the young wife her first experience of brutal violence 
from the man with whom she had just promised to 
spend the rest of her life ; violence perhaps easier 
to forgive after the old woman's explanation that 
her master was not sober and would regret it by-and- 
by, but no easier to bear because the custom and 
spirit of the time offered no hope of any future 
escape from it. 

In those days a woman took her husband for better 
and for worse, and no amount of ill-treatment or 
infidelity on his part could free her from her vow 
to honour and obey him till death. So Caroline 
Norton, when she found herself tied for life to a man 
so different from the one she thought she had married, 
might sob and storm and wish that she was dead, and 
then find what comfort she could in looking about 
and seeing that many other women were as badly 
off as she was, or even worse. She might find 
what comfort she could in letters to her mother, 
full of — we may guess what — passionate appeals for 
sympathy and advice. 

On one occasion when she was writing such a letter, 
with Mr. Norton sitting by, sipping spirits and water 
while he smoked his cigar, the latter interrupted her 
by declaring that he knew from the expression of her 
face she was complaining. She replied with temper 



1 6 MARRIAGE [chap, ii 

that she could seldom do anything else. Upon which 
he snatched away and tore up her letter, forbidding 
her to write at all, but she had not the nature which 
makes a patient Griselda. She took another sheet and 
began another letter. So far the affair had proceeded 
like many another silly wrangle between two young 
people who have not yet learned, as the phrase goes, to 
" get on with one another," It is only in the conclu- 
sion that we see that streak of cruelty which made 
this marriage such a peculiarly unhappy one. After 
watching and smoking a few moments he rose, took 
one of the allumettes she had placed for his cigar, lit 
it, poured some of the spirit which stood by him over 
her writing materials, and in a moment set the whole in 
a blaze. It was by such means as this, he told her, 
that he hoped to teach her not to brave him. 

The visit to Scotland was one George Norton was 
accustomed to make every year to the shooting box 
of Sir Neil Menzies, the husband of his eldest sister 
Grace. This lady was a hard-tempered Scots- 
woman, already prejudiced against her brother's 
marriage for its lack of the worldly advantage she 
wished to have fallen to his share. The relations 
between the two sisters-in-law were uncordial from 
the first. The visit would have been unpleasant 
enough for the young wife even if she had been safe 
in her husband's protection instead of being, as she 
was, nightly in such dread of violence that it drove 
her more than once to watch for the whole night in 
another room rather than submit herself to a chance 
of its recurrence. 

But there was a power of recovery in her temper 
which saved her from the worst effects such treatment 
may have on the spirit; an endless capacity for throwing 
off the burden of a sorrow after it had been borne for a 
certain period, which gave some of the memories even 
of this most wretched time a certain sweetness. She 
loved Scotland, revisited for the first time after long 
absence, " the blue lake and purple hills, . . . the 



1827] STOREY'S GATE 17 

aromatic scent which loads the atmosphere in spots 
thickly planted with firs, . . . the bloom of the heather, 
spread out for miles and miles, the rush of the tumb- 
ling, turbid stream, whose banks were blocks of stone, 
whose shining pools seemed fathomless." She liked 
her brother-in-law, Sir Neil Menzies, and he liked her. 
In fact his general inclination for her society, their 
long walks together on the shores of Loch Rannoch, 
his pleasure in her passionate admiration for the glow 
and the fading of the sunset on the Highland hills, and 
" the lake that lay like a sapphire dropped from the 
crown of some monarch mountain," his constant 
friendliness, in short, to his wife's new sister-in-law, 
was perhaps not the smallest item in Lady Menzies's 
list of grievances against her. 

Mrs. Norton liked coming back to London and settling 
down in a house of her own, that little house at Storey's 
Gate of which we hear so often and in such familiar 
detail that we can almost reconstruct it for ourselves, 
although it has been swept away in the march of 
modern improvement. We can imagine its tiny 
balcony overhanging Birdcage Walk, full of her 
favourite flowers, from which she used to wave a 
greeting to her friends as they streamed by in their 
carriages on their way home from the Derby, or to 
Lord Melbourne as he strolled across the Park from 
his office in Downing Street to the glass doorway 
which gave access to the house on that side. The 
drawing-room, so small that it was nearly filled by its 
big sofa : and the window opposite the sofa, with white 
muslin curtains drawn across it and falling down on 
one side ; and the litter of coloured chalks and drawing 
paper and writing materials, which made the whole 
interior so unlike the conventional lady's reception 
room of that day. 

Here at least her own family were again within 
her reach, her mother and her lovely younger sister 
Georgie, and two little brothers, Frank and Charlie, 
just across the way in Great George Street, and Helen 

3 



1 8 MARRIAGE [chap, ii 

Blackwood and her husband and baby home again 
from Italy, in temporary quarters near Hampton Court. 

And very soon, no doubt, she was able to manage 
her husband, when she chose, and when her own 
stormy temper did not sweep her into direct defiance 
of him. For in those days, in his own way 
perhaps, but as well as his faulty nature allowed, he 
still loved her, and in spite of their differences of 
temperament, in spite of the vast mental and moral 
superiority which she must already have felt more 
and more in all her relations with him, still she was 
so kind, so warm-hearted and affectionate, that any 
love of his must at last have roused a certain return 
in her. Not for some time, however. For some time, 
indeed, the only use she seemed to make of her grow- 
ing power over him was to go her own way regardless 
of his wishes and prejudices. 

One great and fundamental difference of opinion 
between them lay in politics. All the Nortons were 
Tories ; but Caroline, in taking the Norton name,' 
remained openly a Sheridan, devoted to all the 
Sheridan traditions of belief, a valuable aide-de-camp 
of those great Whig ladies, the Countess of Jersey, the 
Countess of Sefton, Lady Cowper— afterwards Lady 
Palmerston — who were doing such valuable service 
to their party by making their social prestige a card 
for winning over susceptible young gentlemen of old 
Tory families to the Whig cause. 

Catholic Emancipation, the subject of the hour as 
long as George Norton remained in Parliament, had 
been one of the things for which the older Sheridan 
had sacrificed himself Catholic Emancipation was 
the bugbear of all good Tories, who never forgave 
their party's betrayal on that point, during the session 
of 1829, by their own leaders. But through all his 
course in Parliament, George Norton must have had 
the discomfort of hearing his wife's enthusiastic 
championship of that and almost every subject against 
which he had already cast his vote. 



i828] THE DUKE OF DEVONSHIRE 19 

He was also, in those days at least, exceedingly 
jealous of her. Yet he had to submit to seeing the 
number and consequence of her admirers increased 
rather than diminished by her marriage with him. 

There was the Duke of Devonshire, for instance, 
that splendid luminary of the Whig party, just home 
from a special mission to St. Petersburg, a bachelor, 
young, good-looking, a connoisseur of all beautiful 
things, and especially beautiful women, with only one 
drawback to his social attractions, the fact that he 
was unfortunately very deaf. The Duke of Devon- 
shire no sooner met Mrs. Norton than he began to 
distinguish her by his attentions — attentions, indeed, 
not always entirely agreeable to other members of his 
family. 

To quote from the diary of his sister, Lady Granville, 
September 16, 1828 : 

" I hear Mrs. Norton is to be at Chatsworth [the 
Duke of Devonshire's famous place in Derbyshire]. I 
am sorry that we are to have an original among us, 
somebody impossible to like and ungracious to dislike. 
I am happy to think that Craddock and Walewski 
are to be with us ; a great relief to the sober part 
of the community to have such game for her to 
point at." 

And another time a little later : 

** The idea of being at Chatsworth with dearest 
Hart is transport mixed with awe and timidity. 
Norton will ask me who I am, and suppose I cannot 
love. I mean to form an alliance with Lord Cowper, 
whose liveliness will not overpower me ! " 

But Lady Granville, quite apart from her sisterly 
affection and her anxiety for her " dearest Hart," was 
also a mother with marriageable daughters, and as 
such had her own prejudices against all three Sheridan 
sisters, and the extraordinary power they seemed to 
possess for making young marriageable men forget 



20 MARRIAGE [chap, ii 

themselves and their own more obvious advantage, 
and rush into mad marriages with girls who had not a 
shilling. She speaks of them all rather flippantly, 
without their prefixes, " Norton," " Blackwood," 
"Sheridan," and seldom loses the opportunity of a 
sly poke or tweak when she has occasion to mention 
them. In one of her trips across the Channel during 
the same year we find her saying : " Leopold and suite 
are going with us. He is going to Berlin ; I shall be 
a very pleasant companion for him, able to talk mild 
Liberal politics, or of Mrs. Norton's charms, as he 
likes best." For Leopold, not yet but soon to be 
elected King of the Belgians, was another of those 
personages who were turning their eyes with dis- 
tinguishing admiration on Mr. Norton's wife. 




p 20] 



MRS. NORTON. 
From a lithograph at Chatsworth. 



CHAPTER III 

"the sorrows of Rosalie" — "the undying one" — 
" social successes " 

Though George Norton had shown himself so far 
capable of generous feeling as to be ready to marry 
the woman he loved, regardless of her lack of fortune, 
he was by no means indifferent to the inconveniences 
resulting from this very cause. Many of the quarrels 
which embittered their marriage arose from his mean 
reminders that she had brought him nothing but her 
person, and was therefore bound to give more and 
expect less than a wife with a better dower. It was 
the sting of necessity, therefore, quite as much as her 
old desire for fame, which drew her again to look for 
a market among the publishers for her poetry. She 
was so far successful that " The Sorrows of Rosalie, a 
Tale, with other Poems," appeared anonymously in 
the spring of 1829, and sold so well that with the 
proceeds she was able to pay all the expenses of her 
first confinement. 

The little book's authorship was only a nominal 
secret. The dedication to Lord Holland is a frank 
enough tribute from Sheridan's granddaughter : 

" Taught in the dawning of life's joyous years 
To love, admire, and reverence thy name. 
Though of youth's feelings few remain the same. 
And the dim vista of its hopes and fears 
Memory hath blotted out, with silent tears — 
21 



22 EARLY POEMS [chap, hi 

Still in its brightness, even as then it came, 
Linked with the half-remembered tales of fame ; 
That word before my darkened soul appears. 
Bringing back lips that speak and smile no more ; 
Spurn not my offering, then, from that bright shrine 
Where hope would place it, but for those of yore 
Permit her name, who trembles o'er each line, 
In its oblivion to be shadowed o'er 
By the bright, happy gloriousness of — Thine." 

It is unnecessary to comment seriously upon the 
contents of this Httle volume. For whatever may be 
said of the mental quality which drove this girl of 
nineteen to a constant effort towards literary creation, 
it would have been little short of a miracle to have 
found real poetry springing so soon out of the mass of 
false relations, false sentiment and extravagant, often 
artificial feeling, which was the conventional inheri- 
tance of every well-brought-up woman in the early 
nineteenth century, with little to counteract it in the 
education, at once meagre and sophisticated, which 
had been especially devised for girls of her class and 
expectations. Add to this the peculiar narrowness 
which great beauty gives to the range of a woman's 
experience when she does come into relation with the 
better educated half of mankind, the lack of proportion 
that is so apt to accompany great personal unhappi- 
ness in the very young, and we are prepared for 
exactly what we find in these first verses of Mrs. 
Norton's. The Tale itself is the long poem of her 
girlish ambition, very long indeed, nearly two hundred 
Byronic stanzas, devoted to the favourite theme for 
pathetic writing at that day, and, indeed, for many 
days to come — the seduction and desertion of a young 
and beautiful girl by a high-born lover, her subsequent 
misfortunes and death. And the shorter pieces are 
melancholy, egotistical effusions, stilted in their ex- 
pression, and varying only from sad to bitter in 
their endless iteration of the disillusionment which 
had followed their author's first real experience of 
life. 



1829] BIRTH OF HER ELDEST CHILD 23 

I need only quote one of these earliest poems to 
give a fair idea of them all : 

" My heart is like a withered nut, 
Rattling within its hollow shell ; 
You cannot ope my breast and put 
Anything fresh with it to dwell. 
The hopes and dreams that filled it when 
Life's spring of glory met my view, 
Are gone, and ne'er with joy or pain 
That shrunken heart shall swell anew. 

" My heart is like a withered nut ; 
Once it was soft to every touch, 
But now 'tis stern and closely shut : 
I would not have to plead with such. 
Each light-toned voice one cleared my brow, 
Each gentle breeze once shook the tree 
Where hung the sun-lit fruity which now 
Lies cold and stiff and sad like me. 

" My heart is like a withered nut — 
It once was comely to the view ; 
But since misfortune's blast hath cut. 
It hath a dark and mournful hue. 
The freshness of its verdant youth 
Nought to that fruit can now restore ; 
And my poor heart I feel in truth, 
Nor sun nor smile shall light it more." 

In July 1829 her first child, Spencer, was born, 
a frail and delicate baby, whose long and serious 
illnesses early initiated his mother into the anguish 
as well as the joys of motherhood. The birth, how- 
ever, of this boy, and the thought of him as the son of 
his father, did more to tame her and attach her to her 
husband than all the violence of George Norton's first 
passion for her. Her new occupation, also, and the 
addition it brought to their narrow income, added con- 
fidence, it might be even tenderness, to her relations 
with her husband. Almost immediately after her son's 
birth she was again at work on a new poem, "The 
Undying One," which, in spite of all her anxieties and 
distractions as the young mother of a very delicate 



24 EARLY POEMS [chap, hi 

baby, was ready for publication at the beginning of the 
following year, 1830. A little glimpse of how she 
worked at that time is shown by another letter of 
Georgiana Sheridan to her brother in India. 

^' SvNUAY, January 24, 1830, 
finished February 8. 

" Dearest Brin, 

'* I am long in giving the promised account of 
our doings at Claremont [Prince Leopold's residence 
near Hampton Court], but have not really had time, 
owing to the illness of poor Caroline's beautiful baby 
— an account of which you shall have anon. He is 
well now. . . . Caroline has finished her new poem, 
called 'The Undying One.' She is going to write 
another poem called * The Lady of Ringstatten,' and 
she has written two volumes of a novel called * Love 
in the World and Love out of the World,' which I 
want her to finish, as prose sells better and easier 
than poetry. She means to ask ;^500, and thinks six 
weeks' more hard writing will finish it, and then she 
intends to write a tragedy." 

Such an output in a few months speaks well for the 
young writer's industry if for nothing else. But, to 
quote her own words, she brought to her many tasks 
" all the energy which youth, high spirits, ambition, 
good health, and the triumph of usefulness could 
inspire, joined to a wish for literary fame so eager that 
I sometimes look back and wonder if I was punished 
for it by unenviable and additional notoriety," 

As to her desire for literary fame, it is not likely 
that work produced in this way, and in such quantities, 
could have much permanent value. 

"The Undying One," which appeared in the be- 
ginning of 1830 under the auspices of a new publisher, 
Colburn & Bentley, New Burlington Street, is a long, 
diff'use poem in four cantos, on the threadbare theme of 
the wandering Jew. Indeed Mrs. Norton herself felt it 
necessary later to apologise for the choice of a subject 
so hackneyed by the confession that when she chose it 



1830] "THE UNDYING ONE" 25 

she was still too unfamiliar with literature to know 
how hackneyed the subject really was. The book was 
dedicated to the Duchess of Clarence, one of the many 
royalties with whom her early residence at Hampton 
Court had brought her into personal relations. In- 
deed, not only the Duchess and the Duke, afterwards 
William IV., but all the young FitzClarences, male and 
female, were friends of that early period, according as 
their ages corresponded with one or another of the 
young Sheridans, and remained in friendly relations 
with them as long as they all lived. 

This time she permitted her name to appear on the 
first page — "The Undying One and other Poems, by 
the Honble. Mr. Norton." It was reviewed in Fraser^s 
Magazine^ a periodical notorious for the violent, per- 
sonal tone of its reviews. But while every known 
weakness of her grandfather and father was exhi- 
bited to the public in a derisive panegyric of the 
Sheridan genius, the young writer and her poem came 
off rather well, better than in the comment of the 
Tory paper John Bull on her assumption of a title to 
which her husband had then no right. He could be 
the Hon. George Norton only if he were the son, not, 
as he was, the brother of a peer ; the existing Lord 
Grantley having inherited from his uncle. 

The "other poems" of this new Collection include 
many of the songs by which the author is best known 
to us now — no doubt well known then before they 
appeared in print, for they were her songs, which she 
sang to her own melodies " in her soft contralto voice " 
— songs which have since been sung by all the beautiful 
dead voices of the last two generations, till it is almost 
impossible to judge them apart from their peculiar 
associations. And whatever the faults we may find in 
them when we come to regard them with a coldly 
critical spirit, they were for a long time excessively 
popular, and might still give pleasure in their graceful 
appeal to a frankly romantic and sentimental side of 
emotion, which, though just now gone rather out of 

4 



26 EARLY POEMS [chap, hi 

fashion, can never go entirely out of existence, and 
may one day come to its own again. 

Tiieir very titles wake familiar memories in those 
who are still possessors of old-fashioned music 
albums : 

" Thy name was once the magic spell 
By which my heart was bound." 

" I dreamt, — 'twas but a dream, — thou wert my bride, love ! " 

" Love not, love not. The thing you love may die." 

" I was not false to thee." 

And last, best known even at the present day : " My 
Arab Steed." 

It was this same year, 1830, that Mrs. Norton made 
the acquaintance of Fanny Kemble, then in the first 
glow of her triumph as an actress at the Covent Garden 
Theatre, a gifted creature herself, with a power of 
description which makes peculiarly alive everybody 
she mentions in that delightful book of hers, " Recol- 
lections of a Girlhood." 

We find here an amusing account of a meeting 
between Mrs. Norton and Theodore Hook, the editor 
of The John Bull Review^ whose mischievous comments 
on her use of her own name had already awakened 
her indignation against him. 

Fanny Kemble did not like Theodore Hook either. 

** I always had a dread of his loud voice and blazing 
red face and staring black eyes, especially as on more 
than one occasion his after-dinner wit seemed to me 
fitter for the table he had left than the more refined 
atmosphere of the drawing-room." 

She goes on to describe his skill in extempore 
composition, concluding at last : 

" But I remember hearing his singular gift in a 
manner that seemed to me as unjustifiable as it was 



1830] THEODORE HOOK 27 

disagreeable. I met him once at dinner at Sir John 
McDonald's, then Adjutant-General, a very kind and 
excellent friend of mine. Mrs. Norton and Lord 
Clements, who were among the guests, both came 
late and after we had gone into the dining-room, 
where they were received with a discreet quantity of 
mild chaff, Mrs. Norton being much too formidable an 
adversary to be challenged lightly. After dinner, 
however, when the men came up into the drawing- 
room, Theodore Hook was requested to extemporise, 
and having sung one song, was about to leave the 
piano in the midst of the general entreaty that he 
would not do so, when Mrs. Norton, seating herself 
close to the instrument, so that he could not leave it, 
said in her most peculiar, deep, soft contralto voice, 
which was, like her beautiful dark face, set to music, 
' I am going to sit down here, and you shall not 
come away, for I will keep you in like an iron crow 
(bar).' 

"There was nothing about her manner or look that 
could suggest anything but a flattering desire to enjoy 
Hook's remarkable talent in some further specimen of 
Ijiis power of extemporising, and therefore I suppose 
there must have been some previous ill-will or heart- 
burning on his part towards her. She was reckless 
enough in her w^onderful wit and power of saying the 
most intolerable, stinging things to have left a smart 
on some occasion in Hook's memory, for which he 
certainly did his best to repay her then. Every verse 
of the song he now sang ended with his turning with 
a bow to her, and the words, 'My charming iron 
crow ' ; but it was from beginning to end a covert 
satire of her and her social triumphs. Even the late 
arrival to dinner and its supposed causes were duly 
brought in, still with the same mock-respectful inclina- 
tion to his ' charming iron crow.' Everybody was 
glad when the song was over, and applauded it quite 
as much from a sense of relief as from admiration 
of its extraordinary cleverness ; and Mrs. Norton 
smilingly thanked Hook, and this time made way for 
him to leave the piano. 

"We lived near each other at this time, we in James 
Street, Buckingham Gate, and the Nortons at Storey's 
Gate, at the opposite end of the Birdcage Walk. We 



28 SOCIAL SUCCESSES [chap, hi 

both of us frequented the same place of worship, a 
tiny chapel wedged in among the buildings at the 
back of Downing Street, the entrance to which was 
from the Park ; it has been improved away by the new 
Government offices. Our dinner at the McDonalds' 
was on a Saturday, and the next day, as we were 
walking part of the way home together, Mrs. Norton 
broke out about Theodore Hook and his odious 
ill-nature and abominable coarseness, saying that it 
was a disgrace and a shame that for the sake of his 
paper, the John Bull, and its influence, the Tories 
should receive such a man in society. I, who, but for 
her outburst upon the subject, should have carefully 
avoided mentioning Hook's name, presuming that after 
his previous evening's performance it could not be 
very agreeable to Mrs. Norton, now, not knowing 
very well what to say, but thinking the Sheridan 
blood (especially in her veins) might have some 
sympathy with, and find some excuse, for him, sug- 
gested the temptation that the possession of such 
wit must always be, more or less, to the abuse 
of it. 

'• ' Witty ! ' exclaimed the indignant beauty, with 
her lip and nostril quivering — ' witty ! One may 
well be witty when one fears neither God nor the 
devil.' " 

A letter of Fanny Kemble's written to Mrs. Jameson, 
very nearly at the time when this event took place, 
gives perhaps a better idea of her impressions of 
Mrs. Norton than these later reminiscences : 

" Glasgow, July 3, 1830. 

" What you say of Mrs. Norton only echoes my own 
thoughts of her. She is a splendid creature, nobly 
endowed every way — too nobly to become through 
mere frivolity and foolish vanity, the mark of the 
malice and envy of such things as she is surrounded 
by, and who will all eagerly embrace the opportunity 
of slandering one so immeasurably their superior in 
every respect. I do not know much of her, but I feel 
deeply interested in her, not precisely with the interest 
inspired by loving or even liking, but with that feeling 



1830] WHIG VICTORIES 29 

of admiring solicitude with which one must regard a 
person so gifted, so tempted, and in such a position as 
hers. I am glad that lovely sister of hers is married, 
though matrimony in that world is not always the 
securest haven for a woman's virtue or happiness ; it 
is sometimes in that society the reverse of an honour- 
able estate." 

The sister referred to is, of course, Georgiana, 
who was married in June 1830 to the eldest son of 
the Duke of Somerset, Lord Seymour, instantly 
acknowledged by his new connection as the dearest, 
kindest brother-in-law in the world. The house where 
the young couple proceeded to establish themselves, 
just across the Park from the Nortons at Storey's 
Gate, No. 18, Spring Gardens, was always a place 
of especial resort for the Sheridan brothers and 
sisters. 

On June 26, 1830, the King, George IV., died, and in 
the general election that followed Lord Seymour came 
in as a Whig from Devonshire, while George Norton 
lost his seat as Tory for Guildford. 

This abrupt conclusion of his Parliamentary career 
was a not unimportant link in the chain of events 
which was to bring such disaster to that unfortunately 
married couple. 

We read in a letter of Mrs. Norton's written to her 
sister Lady Seymour on this occasion : 

*^ August 5, 1830. 

" Norton's election is lost, and with that mixture of 
sanguine hope, credulity, and vanity which distin- 
guishes him, he assures me that, although thrown out, 
he was the popular candidate ; that the opponents are 
hated, and that all those who voted against him did it 
with tears. I swear to you this is not exaggerated, 
but what he says and believes. He is just gone down to 
Wonersh to do the honours oi 3. fete champetre given in 
his name and Grantley's at that place. I am sorry, not 
because I ever hoped to see him an orator, but because, 
after all, it is something lost — one of the opportunities 



30 SOCIAL SUCCESSES [chap, hi 

of life slipped through one's fingers. The most im- 
mediate disagreeable consequence of his not coming 
in for Guildford is that our stay in Scotland is to be 
extended to the end of October or the beginning of 
November, and I fear when he is once there, we shall 
stay the Christmas, as his Parliamentary duties have 
alone prevented it hitherto. The remote evil is more 
to be dreaded if it turns out to be feasible. Grantley 
and he have agreed that to concihate the goodwill 
and affection of the Guildford voters it is necessary 
to be more amongst them than Norton has hitherto 
been. For this purpose they propose, not that Norton 
should come to Wonersh at stated intervals — which he 
has made impossible with any comfort — but that he 
should live at a little cottage there, called Norbrook, 
belonging to Lord Grantley. Norton assures me 
that I am the sort of person to be interested about 
anything, that I shall easily change my delight in 
society for pride and pleasure in my dairy, while his 
health will be materially benefited by the change, 
and that his profession shall still be politics. 

" I am provoked beyond my usual style of heroics, 
and you may think me harsh to him, but this last plan 
beats all. I have yet, however, these hopes : 15/, that 
the natural selfishness of man may prevent the Com- 
mission of 'Bankrupts' from agreeing to Norton's plan 
for his own exclusive benefit ; 2nd^ that the unnatural 
selfishness of his own brother will prevent his getting 
Norbrook at all, unless upon terms which with our 
income would be impossible. And this I am resolved, 
that if Norbrook is not to come into our hands built, 
furnished, and free of prior expenses I will resist, and 
that to the uttermost of my power, the headstrong 
folly which, for the sake of a moderate and most un- 
certain advantage, would, by plunging Norton into 
difficulties from which he would never be able to 
extricate himself, ruin the future prospects, slender as 
they are, of my little one. 

" I shall be very sorry to live in the country, and 
that too just as you are coming to live in town, and 
we might have been so much together. I earnestly 
hope, however, that the plan will not be feasible ; 
there are many difficulties, and to him, difficulties are 
too often impossibilities. Of the Wonersh business 



1830] MR. NORTON'S NEW PLANS 31 

I can only tell you that Lady Grantley says I shall 
never come there again, and will not speak to Norton ; 
and that the day I left town I saw Grantley and young 
Austen chatting arm-in-arm in Pall Mall. 

" I think Grantley hopes that I am fool enough to 
refuse to live with Norton in the country, and that a 
separation would leave Norton once more a tool in 
his hands. Now, dear, he overrates my London feel- 
ings amazingly and underrates my wisdom. God 
bless you, dear. There is a good deal in this letter, 
considering I never cross, but am only crossed. Love 
and congratulations to your good man. 

" Ever your most affectionate, 

"Car." 



The fate she so dreaded, solitude a deux in a quiet 
little Surrey village, did not ever befall her. We 
find her writing in her usual spirits to her sister from 
Brighton later that same year. 

" Brighton, Decetnber 26. 

" * Seule joie de mon ame, charmante et bien-aimee 
Marietta.' 

" Such was the formula with which Jean Sobieski's 
letters to his wife commenced, and such, from my near 
vicinity to the Pavilion, is the kingly salutation which 
rises to my lips, or rather my pen. I return, Madame, 
on Monday, January 3, 183 1, to light up your homes 
with joy. I have wandered about like an evil spirit, 
seeking rest, but finding none. I have bathed, and 
am a little cleaner but none the merrier. I have 
walked up and down the new walk by the seaside, 
but the only visible effect is elephantiasis in my left 
leg and the gout in my right. I have stood looking 
at the sunset on the sea with Clarence Pigeon at my 
side, but the results are merely a red nose and hatred 
of my companion (together with some shame at being 
seen with him because he wears a tail coat of a 
morning). I have watched all the geese who walk 
bare-legged on the Marine Parade * not for fear of 
bein' seen, but for dirting their clothes,' and return 



32 SOCIAL SUCCESSES [chap, hi 

to the bivouac at the Weymouths', weary, stale, flat, 
and unprofitable. I call it ' bivouac ' because the 
Captain always begins, * When I biv-whacked in 
Spain.' Cordial, kind, excellent, amiable, devoted 
friends ! 

*' December 27. 

" I did not finish yesterday, because I was interrupted. 
Yesterday I bade Amelia farewell [Lady Amelia Fitz- 
clarence, about to be married to Lord Falkland], and 
saw her wedding-dress, which was lace over satin, 
with a veil to match, very pretty. She was in very 
high spirits, and looked handsomer than ever. The 
' Falkland Isles ' was full of poetical forebodings and 
assurance that he would govern. ' It's easy talking 
when talking's all,' said I. 'Do you think I couldn't? ' 
quoth he in fury. ' By Jove, I'd make any woman do 
as I pleased, aye, even you, odd as you are, and 
comfortable as you are, and out of my reach as you 
think yourself.' ' I am not out of your reach. Lord 
Falkland,' said I, measuring the distance between us 
with my small brown eye. * Well, you need not 
laugh at me when I'm going away to-morrow.' So I 
desisted. They were hooked-and-eyed this morning, 
and are gone to Cumberland Lodge. I gave the 
creatures my blessing ! 

" I'm always jealous of people who are going to be 
married. Black envy and venomous spite ! " 

The beginning of the new year found her still at 
Storey's Gate, though the little cottage in Surrey must 
have loomed a dangerous possibility across her future 
for some months to come. For the Whig Parliament, 
elected in the summer of 1830, had lost no time in 
turning out Sir Robert Peel and the Duke of Welling- 
ton, and bringing in a new Government headed by 
Lord Grey, and pledged to economy and Parlia- 
mentary reform. And one of the first departments 
to suffer curtailment under the vigorous reorganisa- 
tion of Lord Brougham was that in which George 
Norton served as Commissioner of Bankruptcy. 

It was absolutely necessary then to find some new 
place for him before Lord Brougham should have 



1830] THE NEW MINISTRY 33 

reformed away his old one, or to see him dependent 
upon his brother for the future. The thought of the 
alternative, no doubt, nerved his wife for the task to 
which she presently set herself. 

Fortunately for her, the new Government was com- 
posed largely of friends of her famous grandfather, 
while the new First Lord of the Admiralty, Sir James 
Graham, was her uncle by his marriage with her 
mother's youngest sister. Her own family had already 
felt the advantage of this last connection, which 
brought young Frank Sheridan an appointment among 
the clerks of the Admiralty and Price Blackwood a 
frigate. Mr. Norton's profession excluded him from 
this source of influence ; but it would be a pity if no 
other Cabinet Minister could be found to give him 
preferment suited to his especial training and talents. 

To quote Mrs. Norton's own words : 

** I besieged with variously worded letters of 
importunity the friends whom I knew as the great 
names linked with the career of my grandfather." 

One of these was, of course, the Lord President, 
Lord Lansdowne ; another was Lord Melbourne, the 
Home Secretary. This last-named nobleman was at 
that time approaching his fiftieth year. It might be 
supposed, therefore, that he had left the better part 
of his life behind him. And yet, in fact, he had 
hardly begun his career. He had held office for the 
first time only three years before, the year of Caroline's 
marriage, 1827, when he was appointed Irish Secretary 
under George Canning. He was called home from 
Ireland in January 1828 by the death of his wife, the 
eccentric and unhappy Lady Caroline Lamb. In the 
same year, on the death of his father, he became Lord 
Melbourne, and took his seat in the House of Lords. 
Some time before this event and his appoint- 
ment to the Home Office, his relations with Lady 
Brandon had resulted in a civil suit for damages, 
in which the lady's guilt was as evident as her 
husband's readiness to make money out of it. The 

5 



34 SOCIAL SUCCESSES [chap, hi 

whole affair was given as little publicity as possible, 
but it was well known and discussed in London 
society of that time, to whom it could hardly have 
come as a surprise, for he had never been a man of 
impeccable reputation in those respects, though there 
was a certain grace even in his weaknesses in this 
direction, arising as they did from a sort of inherent 
need for women's society and companionship, and 
capable as they were, sometimes, of a very fine quality 
of friendship. 

Such was the man whom Caroline Norton's letter 
found in his new office in Downing Street. One 
regrets that this one letter, the first of the many 
he was to receive in that same clear, characteristic 
handwriting, has long ceased to exist, and that we 
can never know exactly what graceful and persuasive 
wording brought him to his decision not to write 
his reply but to go and see the woman whose name 
stood at the bottom of the page. He stopped 
at Storey's -Gate one afternoon on his way to the 
Lords ; and though it seemed at first that there 
was little in his power to do for her husband, he 
often afterwards dropped in to see her on his way to 
and from the House, or after a Cabinet meeting. On 
these occasions he used to sit on the sofa in the little 
drawing-room, sometimes highly talkative and amusing, 
at others in the lazy, listening, silent humour which 
Greville speaks of as equally characteristic, " disposed 
to hear everything and say very little." 

They soon were intimate friends. The perfect 
innocence of their relation had at last to be proved, 
but it zvas proved, in a court of common justice, so 
convincingly that even those most ready at first to 
deny it were forced at last to acknowledge how 
profoundly their worldly wisdom, in this case at least, 
had been at fault. That it was a friendship without 
sentiment, however, it is impossible and not necessary 
to believe. He had all the advantages that would 
attract a woman of her temperament : good looks, 



1830] LORD MELBOURNE 35 

maturity of experience, knowledge of the world, com- 
bined with a rude, handsome manliness, and spirits 
as high as, and even more boisterous than her own, 
tempered, like hers, by a vein of thoughtfulness and 
melancholy — this last, however, as much concealed as 
it was in the nature of a very open, unaffected 
man to conceal anything. In his society, too, for 
the first time she felt an answer to her own mind 
such as no one in the world had yet vouchsafed; 
She found a tutor and guide worthy of that eager, 
hungry intelligence which had never yet received its 
proper measure of nourishment. He was a man 
"saturated with information, which was constantly 
bubbling over in an original and sometimes fantastic 
form," yet he heartily despised all the conventions 
and hypocrisies of those learned men who like to 
hold the thought of others in leading strings ; not 
indeed a profound or radical thinker himself, he never 
really went very far afield from the moderate and 
compromised conclusions of the average British mind ; 
but his method of thought was perfectly untrammelled 
and audacious, most acceptable to a spirit which had 
never before been able to stretch to its full height. 

And then he had no small meannesses. He cared 
too little for those rewards and distinctions on which 
the men about him set such a high price. He held his 
own high place lightly. He did not conceal his jovial 
contempt of others who held it dear. 

And as for her eff'ect upon him 1 He was not a man 
to remain quite cold in his relation to any woman ; 
belonging rather to those who even in old age, 
even in their treatment of little children, preserve 
something of the eternal relation, though it may show 
itself at last only in a gentleness peculiarly flattering — 
a sentiment of vain regret for the woman whom perhaps 
he will never live to see. But Caroline Norton was 
not a child, rather an extraordinarily fascinating 
woman, of a beauty so rare and noble that it is hard 
to give it any comparison : with hair black as night and 



36 SOCIAL SUCCESSES [chap, hi 

skin clear olive, without colour, except that she had an 
unexpected way of blushing a sudden red, which 
ebbed and flowed, mounting as she spoke and receding 
as quickly ; and eyes which her generation have 
exhausted themselves in praising : " passionate eyes, 
whose rarely lifted lashes — black, long, and silky — 
made them seem so much more soft than they really 
were." 

There is a characteristic bit among Miss Kemble's 
letters not so often quoted as her other allusions to 
Mrs. Norton : 

'' March Z, 1831. 

" Tuesday I played Belvidera. I was quite nervous 
acting it again after so long a period. After the play 
my father and I went to Lord Dacre's and had a 
pleasant party enough. Mrs. Norton was there, more 
entertainmg and blindingly beautiful than ever, 
Henry [Miss Kemble's brother] desired me to give her 
his desperate love, to which she replied by sending the 
poor youth her deadly scorn. Lord Melbourne desired 
to be introduced to me. I think if he likes he shall be 
the decrepit old nobleman you are so afraid of my 
marrying. I was charmed with his face, voice, and 
manners. We dine with him next Wednesday, and I 
will write you word if the impression deepens." 

The dinner, however, did not come up to the 
pretty young actress's expectations. All three 
Sheridan sisters were there, and the host was so 
absorbed by Mrs. Norton that the other guests were 
overshadowed. 



CHAPTER IV 

LITERATURE AND POLITICS 

The year 1831 marks the flood-tide of Caroline 
Norton's first successes. In this year she was first 
presented at Court in the Drawing-room held by the 
new King, William IV., and Queen Adelaide, on 
April 26, when her splendid beauty made something 
of a sensation ; and from this time on, her name begins 
to appear in the fashionable journals which, unless for 
some good reason, seldom used their space for com- 
moners in their resumes of fashionable doings. 

And it was during this same season that she was 
further gratified by seeing a play of hers staged and 
acted at the Covent Garden Theatre. The Gypsy 
Father^ with the "g" pronounced hard, as one of the 
reviews of it is careful to tell us, was hardly a brilliant 
success. But it was repeated several times to a dress 
circle and private boxes full of fine folk, as Fanny 
Kemble tells us. 

" Tuesday^ May 3 1 , 

" Lady Seymour and her husband, with Corinneand 
Mr. Norton, in a box opposite ours. What a terrible 
piece ! What atrocious situations and ferocious circum- 
stances, tinkering, starving, hanging, like a chapter out 
of the Newgate Calendar. But, after all, she is in the 
right — she has given the public what they desire. . . . 
Of course it made one cry horribly." 

A second edition of " The Undying One," with a 

37 



38 LITERATURE AND POLITICS [chap, iv 

short biographical notice of the poem and the author, 
also appeared in this year in Colburn's New Monthly 
Magazine. Eraser's published her likeness in a line- 
engraving by the clever young Scotsman, Maclise, 
if anything so really unlike her as the slender being, 
with downcast eyes and small head poised upon a 
swanlike neck, drawing water from a tea-urn with 
fingers delicately crooked could be called a likeness. 
Another picture of her by the same hand appears a 
little later in the same periodical, giving her a place 
among " Regina's Maids of Honour," the female con- 
tributors to the paper so-called in those fantastic days. 
But what she wrote, or how" much she wrote for that 
magazine during her first years of literary apprentice- 
ship, it is impossible to tell, from the habit of the 
writers for the more serious periodicals of that day of 
publishing their work unsigned. Her successes were 
not, however, merely social and literary. At no other 
period of her life did her husband seem more proud 
and fond of her than during the year when her in- 
fluence with the Home Secretary got him a judgeship 
in the Lambeth Division of the Metropolitan Police 
Courts, with a salary of £ipoo a year. It was a 
position which exactly suited his tastes and capacities. 
For three days a week, between the hours of twelve and 
five, he had to judge cases brought before him in the 
Lambeth Police Court. His companions on the Bench 
were gentlemen, and the office, while requiring no 
especial talent or knowledge beyond the simplest 
points of common law, yet conferred a dignity upon 
the holder, specially gratifying to a man of his temper. 
He liked it so well, in fact, that he could not persuade 
himself to part with it, not even when his relations to 
the man from whom he received it assumed such a 
character that his retention of it laid him open to the 
harshest criticism. He only resigned a few years 
before his death, when his length of service enabled 
him to retire on a pension. 

In the first blush of his improved circumstances, 



1 831] A PLACE FOR GEORGE NORTON 39 

he set up a cabriolet of his own, and would sometimes 
stop on his way home from his duty to take his wife 
to drive. They also entered upon extensive alterations 
of the house in Storey's Gate, which are described 
in the following letter of Caroline Norton to her 
child's nurse, who had been sent off with the baby by 
the steam-packet to Margate to avoid the confusion at 
home. I give the letter nearly at length, though it has 
already been published in the Appendix of the " Maclise 
Gallery of Portraits," edited by William Bates, because 
it shows a side of her character often overlooked in 
the more turbulent manifestations of her genius — a 
very simple, womanly side, interested in the tiny, 
daily details of domestic life, attached to her child, 
full of wifely subservience to her husband. 

*' King's Gate. 
" Dear Mrs. Moore, 

** I was very thankful to get news of my darling, 
and I am thankml he is out of the poisonous smell 
of paint, which made me so ill I was forced to 
sleep at Georgie Seymour's one night. There never 
was such a mess. But we are having the nursery done 
very nicely. We have changed the buff to stone- 
colour, which makes it less like a garret, and larger 
and lighter-looking, and I have ordered the white 
press to have new panes in it where they are broken, 
and to be grained and varnished as nearly as possible 
like your drawers, which it stands on. . . . The green 
windows make the house look so dark that we are 
going to have the house painted to look like stone, 
the balcony carried out to the end of Mr. Furnivall's, 
and two little mock windows to match the storeroom, 
which will make the house look at least four feet 
larger in appearance. There are improvements for 
you! I trust in Heaven my little one will not have 
caught cold from the rain the night of your arrival, 
and that you got comfortable lodgings. Tell me in 
your next letter more about them, whether they face 
the sea, and whether you have money enough ; how 
Spencer liked the steam-packet, whether he has had 
any return of the relaxation and sickness, poor lamb ! 
I miss him dreadfully, and am continually forgetting 



40 LITERATURE AND POLITICS [chap, iv 

that he is not in the house, and listening for the Httle 
voice on the stairs. Mr. Norton still intends coming on 
Monday, but as he returns on Wednesday, I think an 
hotel would be as cheap as lodgings, unless the person 
you are with could let us have a bedroom and a 
sitting-room for the two nights, which is hardly worth 
while. Perhaps Mr. Norton will let me stay a week 
at Ramsgate ; in that case, if we had a little sitting- 
room I could sleep with you, if your bed is a good 
size ; or, if they have a room with a single bed for me, 
we might eat our meals there and have no sitting-room. 
Pray, dear old woman, ask about and get something 
low ; I am sure if it is cheap Mr. Norton will let me 
stay the week, and I am so poisoned here that if I do 
not get a mouthful of fresh air my little November 
baboon will be born with a green face. Try and 
manage this for me. . . . The King is to sign the 
Patent for Mr. Norton to be made Honourable on 
Monday, and then it is to be hoped the John Bull 
paper will be satisfied. Mr. Norton is very glad, and 
Lord Melbourne has been very kind about it. Lord 
Melbourne is better, and offered me two tickets for 
the House of Lords on Thursday to hear the King's 
Speech. But I must come to my Too-too, who, I hope, 
will give me a ticket when he is Lord Grantley. There, 
kiss your old mother, and send me a message in your 
next letter. Here is a little picture for you. God 
bless you. 

"Caroline Norton." 

The picture referred to in the letter is a little 
sketch of herself in pen-and-ink at the foot of the 
page. All three sisters were in the habit of thus 
illustrating their correspondence, and Caroline especi- 
ally showed therein an admirable talent, as well as 
a dangerously keen sense of her own and her friends' 
absurdities. 

The next letter is written to her husband in the 
same summer while she was away on a visit in 
Wiltshire to her sister. Lady Seymour, and shows 
better than any mere telling how the birth of one 
child and the promise of another had softened and 
tamed her feeling for him : 



1 831] LETTERS 41 

" Maiden Bradley, Mere, Wilts, 
" Tuesday^ July 12. 

** Dearest George, 

** Our chicken came safe to hand this morning, 
it having rained torrents nearly all night. He rested 
at Mere, and came on in the gig Seymour sent, and 
I have just seen him washed and put to bed in a large, 
high, airy room ; he has been in high spirits all day, 
playing with the pet lamb and the beagle puppy, the 
latter of whom shows a decided attachment to his little 
companion, but the lamb is really so stupid and so 
awkward that I wish it roasted a dozen times a day. 
I think and hope Menny has not taken cold, but 
Mrs. Moore says ^that when the rain came on very 
heavy the outside passengers crammed in, and as 
they were very wet, it is a bad chance for him. I 
hear Mr. Bush, the doctor, is a very experienced 
person, with the practice of several parishes in his 
own hands, so I do not feel so unhappy at being 
parted from my beloved Herbert. I got a little scrawl 
from you this morning (which, by the omission of the 
word Mere on the directions, travelled to three or four 
towns), reproaching me for not writing, whereas I 
have written every day except last night, when I 
thought I would wait till the arrival of my dear 
Lambkin, whose coming gave me great joy. Your 
letters are too short, sir, and if you do not make them 
longer, I shall believe you are looking on at the 
domestic happiness of that amiable young person and 
her bridegroom, to whom you were charitable enough 
to pay a visit some time since. Our pony chaise 
comes home to-morrow, and then, I suppose, I shall 
see Longleat [the country place of the Marquis of 
Bath] and tell you something of the country, but there 
is nothing to tell about close by. I dreamed last night 
that you were dying, and two old maids told you 
stories of me, and then persuaded me that you would 
not see me ; but I rushed into your room and found 
it was all a lie, and that you were dying for my 
company ; and then I thought, as I was sitting by you 
explaining, I saw you grow quite unconscious and 
die, wherefore I woke with a flood of tears, and 
walked up and down with bare feet, till Mrs. Moore 
arrived and informed me that you were quite well 
and no old maids with you. I dreamed, the night 

6 



42 LITERATURE AND POLITICS [chap, iv 

before, the baby was drowning, and I saw him floating 
down the river, but no one would attend to me, 
because I was mad I Horrid dreams beset me. I 
cannot bear sleeping alone ; hem 1 You ought to come 
down and protect me. This morning I broke my 
already broken tooth quite up into my jaw, and it 
almost put out my leye with the pain. I drew the 
fragment myself with much trouble with the pincers 
in my dressing-case, and was exactly twenty-four 
minutes at it ! Pity my sufferings ! I will write every 
day of myself and the two children. 

" Ever yours affectionately, 

"Caroline." 

But this better understanding between her and her 
husband was soon to suffer a serious strain. 

In November of the same year her second son, 
Brinsley, was born, and in spite of this new addition 
to the household, in January 1832 George Norton's 
elder sister, Augusta, came to pay her brother a long 
visit. It was the same sister who had made rather 
a favourite of Caroline while she was still a schoolgirl 
at Wonersh ; but the old Hking was not strong enough 
to persist in the more intimate and difficult relation 
of sisters-in-law. Miss Norton was something of an 
invalid, and needed the services of her own maid to 
wait on her. She was also an exceedingly eccentric 
person, and, when she did appear in the world, affected 
a sort of Bloomer costume, a short dress with trousers, 
her hair cropped like a man's, with various other 
masculine singularities. 

It is a well-known fact that no people are so 
sensitive to ridicule as those who have a talent for 
it. It is therefore not unnatural that Caroline should 
have shrunk a little from accompanying Miss Norton 
in public. Thence arose real evasions, fancied slights, 
the retirement of the visitor to jher room for days, 
complaints and self-justification to George Norton, 
who at last, in a fit of temper, declared that his wife 
should go nowhere his sister was not invited, that 
he would cut the traces of the carriage if she presumed 



1832] MISS NORTON 43 

to disobey him. As this lady's visit lasted till 
April, and Mrs. Norton continued to appear at most 
of the fashionable gatherings during the winter of 
1832, besides entertaining constantly at home, we 
must believe that the usual compromise was effected 
between husband and wife. But there was an un- 
gracious influence at work about them both all 
through that winter : resentment and impatience on 
the part of the sister at each new evidence of the 
brother's subservience to his wife's influence, irritation 
on the part of the young hostess at this alien presence 
at her fireside — this unfriendly critic of herself, her 
friends, the management of her household, which last 
must often have suffered in the struggle to combine 
the obligations of a woman writing hard for money, 
and a woman of the world going almost every night 
into society. There was another still more painful 
point of difference between these two sisters-in-law, 
for Miss Norton's visit had fallen in the very midst 
of the excitement of the Reform Bill, and height 
of the struggle for or against the passage of this 
measure between Lord Grey's Ministry and the Tory 
opposition. 

George Norton, as a beneficiary of the Whig 
Government, must have somewhat subdued his here- 
ditary prejudices on the subject, but Augusta, like all 
the Nortons, was a high Tory; and great must have 
been her disgust at seeing her brother's wife in the 
forefront of those female politicians who supported 
the Bill through thick and thin. At this late day it 
is hard to realise the wild and general excitement of 
that period, even among people usually indifferent to 
politics — the bitter personal feeling between the Bill's 
supporters and the Opposition, the friendships severed 
for years or never reunited, the private quarrels 
which can be traced back to this great public question 
— the first and most fruitful cause of all subsequent 
ill-feeling and misunderstanding. 

In this case, at least, it is not too much to say that 



44 LITERATURE AND POLITICS [chap, iv 

nothing in her future was to work Mrs. Norton greater 
harm than the unfriendliness of this particular sister- 
in-law, an unfriendliness which might always have 
been latent in the fundamental difference of those two 
temperaments, but which would never have been 
fanned into such a burning flame of spite and mal- 
evolence as it later manifested without some such 
blast of public excitement as the passing of the 
Reform Bill in 1832. 

A pretty letter to Babbage, rather a great personage 
in his day, the inventor of a calculating machine and 
a writer on the science of mathematics, begging him 
to interest himself in the great struggle is amusing 
evidence of her activities during this period. 

^^ Saturday, May 2, 1832. 

" Dear Sir, 

*' You will, I fear, think me very impertinent in 
addressing you, but my sister. Lady Seymour (who is 
more fortunate in being better acquainted with you), 
is in Wiltshire, and Seymour in Devonshire, where 
we heartily wish you could pay him a visit. I don't 
know whether Lady Seymour's anxiety for Lord 
John's [Russell's] success will weigh with you. She 
was conceited enough to say to me one day when we 
were reading your * Apology ' in Mrs. Leicester Stan- 
hope's album, * Mr. Babbage likes me ! ' But whether 
your imagined preference be great enough to induce 
you to exert yourself in the same cause as Seymour, I 
dare not conjecture. All I can say is, that it would 
be doing a great favour not only to Lord John but to 
friends of yours who are also friends of his. It is the 
first year Georgie Seymour has seemed eager about 
politics ; you will not instruct her so harshly in 
philosophy as to teach her how to bear a first dis- 
appointment ? 

" Not having your name to aid us is as if you made 
a long speech in favour of Mr. Parker — which is not, 
surely, what you intend ; is it ? 

" Pray, pray, do not be angry with me — great anxiety 
will make one bold, and the last thing I have in- 
tended is any disrespect towards you. I know it will 
be a great disappointment to Georgie, I am certain it 



1832] PORTRAIT BY HAYTER 45 

will be a great disappointment to Seymour. For 
myself, I do not say anything but that it is not my 
first year of anxiety in the cause. Whichever way 
you decide, let me have one line to say you are not 
displeased with me. I shall value it as an autograph 
even if you refuse our petition. 

" May I get up a petition with many signatures (all 
ladies) begging you to go down and vote ? 
" With repeated apologies, 

" Believe me, dear Sir, 

" Yours very truly, 

" Caroline Norton. 
"2, Storey's Gate, St. James's Park." 

The soft persuasions of this letter had their desired 
effect on Mr. Babbage, who remained a warm friend of 
Mrs. Norton's for many years to come. 

It was during the last winter of this stormy struggle 
that she sat for her portrait to John Hayter, a fashion- 
able painter of the day. He painted her twice, once 
in profile and once nearly full face, with her familiar 
downcast look ; this last picture especially, very hand- 
some, very Eastern-looking, and, according to Fanny 
Kemble, very like her, but '* not her handsomest look." 
One wonders whether it was the custom in those days 
for lovely young married women to sit unchaperoned 
to fashionable painters in the latter's studios, or 
whether the incident told in the following extract from 
Moore's diary is only another example of the daring 
unconventionality which gave society so many handles 
against Mrs. Norton when her great break with her 
husband put her at the mercy of public opinion. 

"Aprils- — Called upon Mrs. Norton; found her 
preparing to go to Hayter's, who was painting a 
picture of her; and offered to walk with her. Had 
accordingly a very brisk and agreeable walk across 
the two Parks, and took her in the highest bloom of 
beauty to Hayter, who said he wished that some one 
would always put her through this process before she 
sat to him. Hayter's picture promises well. 



46 LITERATURE AND POLITICS [chap, iv 

" Happening to mention that almost everything I 
wrote was composed in my garden or the fields, * One 
would guess that of your poetry,' said Mrs. Norton. 
' It quite smells of them.' " 

It was in this year 1832 that she assumed the 
editorship of La Belle Assemblee and Court Magazine^ 
a small monthly periodical whose name denotes the 
class of people it was expected to please, not, as it 
would first seem, any attempt to chronicle the doings 
and fashions of the Court itself. To this she con- 
tributed a variety of articles, stories, and poetry, and 
book reviews, signed and unsigned, the most note- 
worthy among them being a series of satirical papers 
on " The Peculiar Customs of the County of Middle- 
sex," " The Invisibility of London Husbands," " Great 
Ladies," " The Law of Libel," etc. 

Later in the summer she went with her children 
and her husband to Scotland — he to pay his usual 
visit to Lady Menzies on Loch Rannoch — she as soon 
as she could to escape that ungracious hostess for 
kinder friends of her own. From the house of one 
of these she writes the following letter to her 
husband. 

" Dear George, 

" I fear this will be but a hurried line, for they 
do run about so all day in the open air that time 
slips away till we dress for dinner. Penny [Spencer] 
is very well indeed, and I have bought some flannel 
at Dundee to roll him in. I have not heard again of 
Baby. 

"Lady • is come with a sweet little child for Penny 

to play with. Lord , and Mr. , and Lord 

come to-morrow. We are asked to Camperdown. I 

saw the handsome old Lord and a young one. 

Come back, darling, I am wishing for you. To drive 
four small piebald ponies, and swing, and flinging 
beech-nuts at one another's heads is all we do ; and 
very good sport it is. I shall write you again to- 
morrow or next day, and pray write to me. I have 




p. 46] 



MRS. NORTON. 
After the portrait bv John Havter. 



1832] LETTER FROM SCOTLAND 47 

not heard of you yet. Direct Perthshire. It 

comes quicker. 

" Tell Mrs. Charles Norton there never was any- 
thing so beautiful as the room she is to have in right 
of being a bride — an enormous room looking on the 
lawn, and ebony furniture and the most magnificent 
things in it. Ditto dressing-room for Charles. 

" The house is lovely, and there are eight new rooms 
furnished. God bless you. Love to all. 

" Ever your 

" Carey. 
"Hon. G. Norton, 

" Rannoch Lodge, 

''^ August 2P, '^^2)'2" 



CHAPTER V 

GEORGE NORTON — FAMILY LETTERS 

The next winter there were no disturbing visitors at 
Storey's Gate, and there was even more entertaining 
in the tiny drawing-room. 

We read of a birthday dinner given by his sister to 
Brinsley Sheridan, the eldest of the family, just home 
from India, at which not the least distinguished guest 
was young Mr. Disraeli, then chiefly known as his 
father's son and the author of the clever novel, " Vivian 
Grey." The young writer was very much taken with 
all the Sheridans, and his letters written to his sister 
during this year and the next have frequent mention 
of hours spent among them, their beauty, their wit, 
their agreeable companionship, in terms too often 
quoted to be more than referred to here. But there is 
one funny little incident belonging to this time and 
this connection, which comes from another source, and 
may well be repeated as it was told long afterwards to 
the American Minister, Motley, by Lady Dufferin. 

" He was once dining with my insufferable brother- 
in-law, Mr. Norton, (of course, long before the 
separation), when the host begged him to drink a 
particular kind of wine, saying he had probably never 
tasted anything so good before. Disraeli agreed that 
the wine was very good. 

•' * Well,' said Norton, ' I have got wine twenty 
times as good in my cellar.' 

48 



1833-4] THE "ENGLISH ANNUAL" 49 

" ' No doubt — no doubt,' said Dizzy, looking round 
the table, ' but, my dear fellow, this is quite good 
enough for such canaille as you have got to-day.' 

" Everybody saw that the remark was intended as a 
slap for Mr. Norton, except that individual himself, 
who was too obtuse to feel it." 



He was probably often too obtuse to feel it, and 
yet often ill at his ease in the society his wife was 
able to gather around her. So far removed were 
those two from each other in tastes and capacities, 
that nothing could be permanent between them but 
the discomfort of living together. Though, as is often 
the case with such eternal unfitness, when everything 
was prosperous and every one was well, things would 
move along with every appearance of real harmony. 
But let once come the strain of illness, or weariness, 
or disappointment, and then all the wretched old 
differences sprang to the surface again. 

In the spring of 1833 Mrs. Norton found herself 
again about to have a child, and for the first time she 
seems to have felt herself unequal to all the demands 
her life continued to make upon her. 

Besides the Court Magazine, she had assumed the 
editorship of the English Annual for 1834, one of those 
publications so fashionable in her own day, appearing 
just before each new year, composed of beautiful steel 
engravings and sentimental extracts in prose and 
verse, prepared especially for and by the English 
upper classes. Indeed, the very existence of these 
Annuals depended on titled scribblers who were 
content to furnish their contributions merely for the 
pleasure of seeing themselves in print, or on fledgling 
poets who liked to find themselves in such company. 
The most successful editor was, therefore, some woman, 
like the Countess of Blessington, whose social and 
literary distinction could draw about her the greatest 
number of these unpaid contributors. 

Mrs. Norton's own contributions to the English 

7 



so GEORGE NORTON— FAMILY LETTERS [chap, v 

Annual during the two years she conducted it were 
chiefly old articles in verse and prose which had already 
appeared in her own Court Magazine, but her friends, 
and especially her own family, were all applied to for 
original manuscripts. An amusing letter written 
to her sister, Lady Seymour, hardly three weeks 
before her last child was born, gives a good idea of 
her various and exhausting activities during this 
critical period. 

'' August % 1833. 

(Postmark). 

" Pine not, oh daughter of the Maccacey tribe, 
neither cease to adorn thy hair with sea-shell and 
coral, for thy tribe have not forgotten thee, but see 
thy place still empty among them, and weep (when 
they have time) that thou art in the land of Bantams 
while they are in the Town of Fowl Deeds." 

[Lady Seymour was very much interested in country 
pleasures, and had white and coloured bantams. The 
title by which she is here addressed refers to one of 
her contributions to her sister's magazine.] 

" I have been going to write for some days, but have 
been waiting till Ferraro had finished a little frame for 
a card drawing of Hermione [Lady Seymour's eldest 
daughter], which my fingers sketched and painted the 
last day of her sojourn at Hampton Court. I drove 
down in the gig with Spencer and John, with three 
pencils and a night gown, to the said Palace, and then 
and there achieved the deed. I trust you feel obliged 
to me, though I am afraid the many discontented 
touches which I have given it since have destroyed 
my likeness ; it was done in a hurry, and she could not 
endure sitting. The moment a frame is ready I will 
send it down. I am very busy writing just now. 
Colburn has re-engaged me for the New Monthly, and 
I have Friendships Offering and the Keepsake to see to 
before the loth, besides my magazine (for which I am 
in hourly expectation of a long story from Seymour, 
or a continuation of his * Few Words on Imposture '), 
and which must be ready by the 15th. 

** Mamma is in town ; why, she does not say, but she 
never went further than Portsmouth, and met in the 



1833] LETTERS TO LADY SEYMOUR 51 

coach from thence a female cretin who had travelled in 
the Cordillera Mountains, and whom she engaged 
immediately for the Court Magazine. 

** Norton is surprised at my wanting to move any- 
where/ and assures me he has only money to take 
himself to Scotland ; but I think he will finally allow 
three weeks or so at the Isle of Wight, as it will 
be very cheap in September, the regattas, etc., being 
over. 

" The Treasurer of Covent Garden and Drury Lane 
called on me to request me to * oppose by every vote 
in my power the Dramatic Representation Bill, and to 
stretch out the hand of their greatest dramatist's grand- 
daughter to save the two large theatres from ruin.' 
I thought they exaggerated the strength of my arm, 
but promised them fair, and the Bill has failed in 
consequence. 

** Farewell. Love to Seymour and that dear Fatty 
your youngest daughter. 

" Yours ever affectionately, 

" Car." 

A little later comes the following : 

" Dearest Georgie, 

" I send Mione's picture. Perhaps you will 
think it too harsh ; the eye of a fond parent has a 
beam in it which prevents it seeing clearly. I can 
improve and alter it at any time when you have it 
with you. The beastly frame has been the cause of 
the delay. 

'* I have had another giggle ; a book was sent me 
with a very civil note begging me to accept So-and-So's 
little tract upon the ' Truth.' 1 read it, and thought it 
was some religious man looking after me, but opening 
the parcel before I went to bed, I was agreeably 
surprised at finding a tract on the * Teeth,' by Mr. 
Nicholles, surgeon-dentist. I opened it : it was a 
good-sized book, bound in crimson silk and beauti- 
fully printed, and after the title page came a grey satin 
presentation page inscribed in very large gilt letters 
with rny illustrious name ! 

' After her confinement. 



52 GEORGE NORTON— FAMILY LETTERS [chap, v 

" Sunday. — I giggle not, I am frenzied with rage. 
I send Mione without a frame. Think, after waiting 
so long, of my getting a horrid, large, cumbersome, 
coarse thing, forty times too big, and the oval centre 
three times as large as the drawing. I am so dis- 
appointed. But I will get another — it looks so much 
better in the frame, a peculiarity which must give a 
great idea of my style of painting. 

" Thank Seymour very much for the notice of 
national education. I thought it very clever and droll, 
though shocked at any measure of this Government 
being abused in rny magazine. Lord Melbourne was 
greatly pleased at ' The Life of a Woman of the Maccay 
Tribe.' Mrs. Charles [Norton] wrote me so funny an 
account of the bothers of moving with the regiment 
that I have printed it, ' with additions and alterations,' 
in the magazine. Anything anybody will send will be 
gratefully received for the month I must be in bed. 
I hear Nell is ill, poor thing, and none the better for 
the Isle of Wight. Farewell. I think you will not hear 
from me again till the great event is over. I dare say 
I shall have a boy, because my heart is set the other 
way. I have, however, bought a white hood similar 
to one I generally gave you, and trimmed up the caps 
like Mione's. Love to Seymour. Let one or the other 
inscribe to me from time to time, as these waiting days 
are dull. 

" Yours very affectionately, 

" Carry." 



These letters, so gay and courageous in their tone, 
do not tell half the strain she was under during the 
months before her baby was born. She was always 
a person whose sleep was easily broken, and moreover 
she was so extravagant of precious forces that she 
often wrote far into the night, at high pressure, 
to complete her tasks for the day. In the day she 
was at times languid, irritable, impatient beyond her 
usual habit, of everything around her. And her 
husband responded to the changed touch on the reins, 
like a vicious horse. That summer was the occasion 
of an access of brutal ill-treatment from him — so much 



^^33] QUARREL WITH HER HUSBAND 53 

worse than anything she had hitherto experienced 
that she was driven for the first time to make an effort 
to escape from it. They had had one of their long 
wranghng discussions at dinner, till her patience 
suddenly gave way, and she left him abruptly, 
ordering him not to follow her, on the plea that she 
had writing to do in the drawing-room which must 
be finished that night, and that she did not wish to be 
disturbed. Her manner ofTended her husband's dignity. 
He was further outraged to find that her fit of quite 
excusable petulance had carried her so far as to make 
her lock the dining-room door after her as she went 
out. There was another door to the dining-room, 
opening direct into the Park. It was quite easy for 
him to let himself out by this and walk round the 
corner to the front door on Prince's Court, which his 
servant opened at his knock. But he had not the kind 
of temper to be cooled by such deliberate action — quite 
the reverse, in fact. He went upstairs, and finding the 
drawing-room door also locked, wrenched it from its 
fastening. He found his wife sitting at her little table, 
writing, with her maid sewing beside her. He ordered 
the woman to leave the room, and when her mistress 
commanded her at the same moment to remain, declaring 
that she was afraid to be left alone with her husband, 
he turned upon everything around them, throwing 
down the table, scattering in every direction the 
papers with which it was covered, blowing out and 
smashing the candle. Then, calmed perhaps by the 
effect of his own violence, he called for more lights 
and began to look about him with some return of 
his usual manner, till, seeing his wife not sufficiently 
cowed to conceal her scorn of such an extra- 
ordinary exhibition, he suddenly fell upon her, with 
a fierceness so far beyond anything she had ever seen 
in him before that she thought he had gone out of 
his senses, and actually feared for her life as she felt 
herself being forced out of the room and down the 
stairs. It was only with the help of her servants that 



54 GEORGE NORTON— FAMILY LETTERS [chap, v 

she was able at last to free herself from his hands, and 
escape upstairs to her children's nursery, where she 
spent the night. 

The next day she was too ill to follow her first 
inclinations and leave his house for ever ; but matters 
had reached a point when her own family felt obliged 
to interfere. Her family, indeed, were more severe 
on her husband than she was, insisting upon a written 
pledge from him to them of his future good behaviour 
before they allowed her to come back to him. She 
apparently would have been content with his word, 
and some sign that he was sorry for what he had 
made her suffer. 

It is not surprising under the circumstances to hear 
that when her third son was born, August 26, 1833, 
she had a very bad confinement, and a slow and 
difficult recovery. 

There is a letter to her mother, written painfully at 
intervals during her illness. 

" Wednesday, nth. 

" Dearest Mother, 

" I got your letter, and very glad I was to get it, 
for the chances of wind and wave seemed much against 
safe travelling. [Mrs. Sheridan was then at the Isle 
of Wight, though she had evidently been with her 
daughter at the time of the latter's confinement.] 

" 1 beg pardon for not having answered it, but I have 
been obliged to see Bull and look over papers . . . and 
what with Lilly's restrictions and another headache, 
all my friends have been allowed to languish in 
ignorance. [Lilly was the monthly nurse.] I am 
going on perfectly well as to nursing, etc., but the 
pain in my back is little decreased, and has taken 
to itself a wife in the shape of a pain down my left leg 
to the knee . . . however, this, my only disease, seems 
better to-day (my first day in the drawing-room), and 
I hope it will go off, and just give me, like Georgia, a 
good year for hops. 

" My dear little Too-too is apparently to be the 
beauty of the family, but I think his eyes will be 
black. You perceive by the * but ' that I prefer the 



1833] BULL AND "THE COURT MAGAZINE" 55 

blue eye and black eyebrows, which you amused 
yourself making for the best-looking of your progeny, 
and indeed that sort of colouring has an expression of 
its own, independent of feature. Look at Lady Jersey." 

She goes back to her interview with Bull, the pro- 
prietor of her Court Magazine, the beginning of the 
difficulties which ended in her giving up the editor- 
ship of that little periodical. 

" After all my trouble and ambitious hopes, Bull 
wants to do his work himself; in fact, to have no 
sub-editor, I have promised to experimentalise 
accordingly, but I regret his beginning to shrink 
from expenses. He says also that nine or ten guineas 
a month are all that can be spent on the literary 
portion. This is very little ; it makes two-thirds of 
the book a gratis performance, but it is something 
to have one's own way. 

" Nurse me the magic story whose banns with your 
novel I forbid, and let me have a colonist story about 
the Cape, Dutch and English; there is no colony of 
equal importance so little talked about as the Cape (in 
books). I engage you professionally. Also Nelly, if 
her lazy pate will send to the pen in her lazy patte an 
Inkle and Yarico story in those woods she is so fond 
of painting. . . . 

" I have been two days getting through this elaborate 
epistle. I can't see and I can't sit up without getting 
blind and aching. I long to be at the seaside. Charles 
Sheridan [her uncle] I think will go with me, and 
promises me the use of a horse bought from Blank, 
and therefore liable to make * faux-pas,' Give my love 
to Nelly. I would fain write to her, but cannot. Let 
her write to me again. . . . 

" Ever your affectionate 

"Car. Norton," 

She did at last manage to get away with all three 
children to the seaside at Worthing. Later in the 
same autumn we find her making a visit with her 
husband in the country. 

A letter to her mother describing her journey there 



56 GEORGE NORTON— FAMILY LETTERS [chap, v 

gives a characteristic glimpse of that gentleman as a 
travelling companion. 

" Dear Mother, 

" Here we are, after a most uncomfortable and 
wearing day. We got up at six, and actually at eight, 
when I stood prepared to start, I found Norton writing 
an estimate of repairs for the buggy! It was nine 
before we got to . The consequences were two- 
fold. First, we were forced to take four horses the last 
thirty miles ; and, second, we quarrelled about it. The 
roads were exceedingly heavy, and I was starved, so 
I paid the extras. We should have come in time for 
dinner but for a little accident. One of the postillions 
was thrown, and they stopped to bleed the horse ; the 
man was as nearly killed as possible ; the wheel went 
over his hand, and the carriage was stopped just in 
time to spare his head. It made me nervous, especially 
as we kept backing into a ditch all the time on very 
frosty grass. . . . 

" Moore is here, and very amusing. He says when 
first Lady Holland heard he was to bring out ' Lalla 
Rookh,' she said, * What's that Irish thing, Larry 
Rourke, that you are to bring out?' 

" Lady Barrington is just gone. Our present party 
are Lord John Russell, Lord Auckland, and some 
young men who run in and out, but I cannot dis- 
tinguish them one from the other or find out their 
names. 

" Baby bore it very well and has not taken cold. I 
wish for a line to tell me how you feel. Nothing can 
be worse for everybody than this weather, soaking 
wet. My hands shake with cold, and my head aches 
like ten.'"^ 

From the same place comes the following letter to 
Lady Seymour : 

" Dear Georgie, 

" This place is supereminently dull, though all 
the people are charming in their different ways. There 
is a stiffness, a punctuality, a shyness about every one 
in the house which makes me think of the famous 
fairy tale in which the air froze the words before they 



1833] LETTERS TO LADY SEYMOUR 57 

reached the sea they were intended for. Lord Auckland 
I like very much ; he has a very grave, gentle manner, 
with a good deal of dry fun about him. Emily Eden 
is undeniably clever and pleasant. . . . We have had 
Tom Moore, and still preserve a very clever little man, 
a Mr. Burn, employed by Government to make dis- 
coveries in Asia and Africa and other little places. He 
is exceedingly amusing, without being the least byway 
of giving us ' information.' . . . 

*' About coming to you, dear, which I wish very 
much, I must yet await many decisions. I think I 
might come for a few days, and have sent on your 
letter to Norton, who is at Guildford ' recording ' 
[Mr. Norton held for a great many years the office of 
Recorder for Guildford]. My great puzzle at this 
moment is what to do with Charles Sheridan, who 
very good-naturedly offered to come with us and halve 
the expenses of posting, and if I go round without 
him, lo ! where shall I get cash ? for 1 spent so much at 
Worthing that I really am quite dependent on Norton 
now. About rooms, you need not mind for me. Pearce 
can sleep on the ground and sing herself to rest with 
the song, ' My lodging is,' etc., and the baby either 
with me or her. . . . Norton cannot leave town any 
more now, so the only point is whether he will give 
leave, and whether dear fidgety uncle will make some 
plan for himself and money, money, money ! We have 
our own carriage and must post. 

" I shall be so glad to introduce my small William 
to 'the Saxon bundle.'" 

[Lady Seymour's second daughter Ulrica (fair hair), 
afterwards married to Lord Henry Thynne.] 



CHAPTER VI 

TRIP ABROAD — BRINSLEY's MARRIAGE 

Nothing is more noticeable in every mention of the 
Sheridan family at this time than the liking they 
seemed to have for being together. The married 
sisters were constantly inviting each other and their 
brothers and mother and uncle to each other's houses, 
and strangers were always finding that wonderful 
group — ** Mrs. Norton, looking as if she were made 
of precious stones, diamonds, emeralds, rubies, sap- 
phires ; Lady Seymour, with her waxen, round white 
arms and eyes streaming with soft brilliancy, like 
fountains by moonlight " ; Mrs. Sheridan, more beau- 
tiful than anybody but her daughters ; young Brinsley, 
" the only respectable one of the family," as his sister 
once mischievously remarked to Disraeli, qualifying it 
at once with the conclusion, "and that is because he 
has a liver complaint," which fact did not prevent him 
from being six feet tall and as handsome and agreeable 
as any of his brothers and sisters ; Lady Graham, their 
beautiful aunt ; Mrs. Blackwood, who ought to have 
been the good one, according to Disraeli, *' only I 
am not," as she assured him herself; and Frank 
and Charles, " younger brothers to the Apollo 
Belvedere." 

Out of this love for each other's society there 
arose a plan for a family trip abroad in the August 
of 1834; the Seymours, Brinsley, and Mrs. Black- 

58 



1834] LETTER TO MURRAY 59 

wood, then living witti her mother at Hampton Court 
in the absence of her husband on his frigate. " We 
shall go," says Lord Seymour in a letter to his 
father, " by Calais to Ghent, Antwerp, Cologne, and 
then embark on the Rhine, and when we are tired of 
German scenery we shall return to Brussels and see 
Leopold in all his glory. We shall return probably in 
November." 

At first it was not expected that the Nortons 
were to be included in this expedition, but at the 
last moment she was able to persuade her sulky 
husband to forgo his usual shooting season in Scot- 
land, and join the others, on condition, however, that 
she, not he, furnished the wherewithal for the trip. 
No very easy undertaking, one may believe, for her 
long illness at William's birth had been followed by 
another which had kept her confined to her room for 
some time during the following winter. At the same 
time, the abrupt conclusion of her engagement with 
Bull, proprietor of the Court Magazine, ihad put an 
end to one sure source of income. 

She tried to get Murray to take a poem she had 
just finished. 

" Au^si 2, 1834. 

" Sir, 

** When my poem, ' The Undying One,' was first 
written it was offered to you with a very overrated 
idea of what it was worth, in many respects. 

" You refused to publish it, and favoured me at 
the time with some criticisms on the style and subjects, 
which I have always remembered, though the tempta- 
tion to publish it at the time was very strong, and 
I therefore agreed with Mr. Colburn, who made your 
refusal a plea for fulfilling only one half of his original 
agreement. I have now another, a shorter poem by 
me, called ' The Maiden's Dream.' I have taken 
pains with it, and have avoided, as far as I could, all 
the faults imputed to my first attempt. My wish is 
to print it with fugitive pieces, in one volume, and 
sell the MS. for ;^ioo; but I would willingly give the 



6o TRIP ABROAD— BRINSLEY'S MARRIAGE [chap, vi 

MS. without the last-named condition, if you would 
undertake the publication, I saw that you had printed 
Lady E. Wortley's poems. For many years you have 
been the encourager and supporter of poetical talent, 
and as I am still as eager (though, I hope, more 
humble than when I set out), I hope you do not mean 
to make me the exception to your rule. 

" If you would see me on this subject to-morrow 
before five, and would name the hour most convenient, 
Mr. Norton would accompany me to Albemarle Street. 
I mention to-morrow, because it is one of Mr. Norton's 
very few leisure days, and if that is inconvenient I 
shall hope to be able to fix another. 

" I am, Sir, your obedient servant, 

"C. Norton." 

Murray's answer to this was a refusal. Indeed it 
was several years before this particular poem appeared 
in print. But she at last found a publisher so obliging 
that he was willing to contract with her for a story 
not yet written, Messrs, Saunders & Otley, who 
afterwards brought out her first long novel " The 
Wife." With this in prospect, she set off with her 
husband and joined the others at Antwerp. One of 
the prettiest of her later poems is written in descrip- 
tion of this journey : 

Ehrenbreitstein 

" Oh, mighty fortress, lovely Rhine ! 
How well those scenes my heart remembers, 
Though since I last beheld them, Time 
Hath changed my life with ten Septembers. 
But that September who shall tell 
The joy, the triumph, the delight 
Of setting off for foreign lands, 
And travelling on, by day and night ? 
Who shall describe how pleased we were. 
The large home party, setting forth 
To bask in sunshine carelessly, 
And seek adventures south and north ? 
The journal-books and sketch-books, kept 
Under such sacred lock and key 
(Except — and that was every day — 
When careless owners left them free), 



1834] EHRENBREITSTEIN 6i 

Which woke within our busy minds 
For art and memories such a rage. 
We could not pass the first hotel 
Without the subject for a page. 

" And then, in spite of rattling wheels, 
The long, long letters written home 
To tell of distant Germany, 
To tell how glad we were to roam : 
How all along the vineyard grounds 
The stunted vines like currants grew, 
Not like those married to the elms 
Which our misleading fancy drew. 
How little Nonnenwerth was like 
An emerald in a silver setting ; 
How stupid one among us was. 
The passports and the trunks forgetting ; 
How all old legends were confirmed, 
Because we saw with our own eyes, 
Above the clear transparent wave, 
The towers of Rolandseck arise : 
And stamped on memory by the scene, 
All history's facts appeared to live. 
Presenting the mysterious charm 
Which 'picture books' to children give. 

" The merry laughs, the active steps, 
The eager hearts, the curious eyes, 
The vine-clad hills, the crumbling towers, 
The deep blue wave, the sunny skies. 
The Grand Dukes, Archdukes, blandly kind ; 
The peasants, beautiful and poor ; 
The wonderful adventures (sent 
To every traveller on his tour) ; 
The wild, delightful, rambling days. 
Whose image, still surviving, seems 
That they alone of life seem real. 
And all the rest but fading dreams. 

" Oh river, at this present time 
How like thy unreturning tide, 
Bright, fleeting, wonderfully fair, 
Those vanished days before me glide. 
The journal now is locked away. 
The sketch-book opened with a sigh, 
And pictures of the lovely Rhine 
Are gazed at with a saddened eye : 



62 TRIP ABROAD— BRINSLEY'S MARRIAGE [chap, vi 

Because so much that then was joy, 
Succeeding years have turned to pain ; 
So much can only grieve the heart, 
That made it beat with pleasure then." 

But her enjoyment of the expedition soon received 
a disastrous check. As might have been expected, 
George Norton hated travel abroad. His relations 
with his brothers and sisters-in-law may at the moment 
have been friendly, but they hardly could have con- 
tinued very cordial after the open family discussion 
which had taken place at his last outbreak against his 
wife. At his best moments he would have been of 
too alien a temper to add much to the enjoyment of 
the travelling party. No doubt they were all relieved 
when at Aix-la-Chapelle he fell ill of a lameness that 
kept him behind while they went on without him ; 
except, of 'course, his wife, who had to swallow her 
disappointment as best she might and devote herself 
to the obvious duty of nursing him back to health. 
She was too kind really, too ready for any emergency 
of self-sacrifice to dream of doing anything else. But 
there was another side to her nature, the necessary 
complement perhaps of the extravagant generosity of 
her first impulses. She could not go on submitting to 
selfish tyranny day by day without a crumb of praise 
or appreciation. George Norton, however, was not 
the sort of man to think of others in his own dis- 
comfort. He could speak no foreign language, so he 
refused to be waited upon by any one but herself. 
He seldom consented to be left alone ; and as day after 
day passed for her, shut up in a dreary hotel room 
with no society but that of a stupid, ill-tempered 
husband, she no doubt had plenty of time to ask 
herself whether, for this particular pleasure, she had 
not paid too much. Her melancholy letters to her 
family brought Brinsley back to bear her company, 
and soon they all joined forces again. But Mr. Norton's 
illness had not improved him as a travelling com- 
panion, though his wife was of course the chief victim 



1834] QUARREL WITH HER HUSBAND 63 

of his ill-temper, till at the end of a long day's journey, 
during which he had persisted in filling their little 
closed travelling carriage with the smoke of his 
** hookah," in spite of her reiterated entreaty that it 
was making her ill, her thin-worn endurance gave 
way, and she snatched at the pipe and flung the 
mouthpiece out of the window. The carriage was 
then slowly ascending a hill. He got out and re- 
covered the missing part of the pipe, and then came 
back to repay her for her loss of temper by a savage 
onslaught, which left the marks of his fingers on her 
throat, and from which she with difficulty escaped by 
slipping out of the half-closed door of the carriage to 
run after the others and entreat some one of her family 
to travel with them and protect her from further 
ill-usage — for all which she forgave him more quickly 
than her family did. From this time forth all that 
was friendly in their relations with their brother-in- 
law ceased, and never was renewed again. They 
took her on with them to Paris, where she wrote 
somewhat later, in answer to a complaining and 
repentant letter from him : 

" Dear George, 

"You can't think how I reproach myself at your 
being ill ; it makes me quite unhappy ; but it shall 
never happen again ; your remorseful wife promises 
you faithfully. You are a good, kind husband in the 
long run, and don't believe me when I say harslK 
things to you, waking or sleeping ; balance my word^ 
that night against the day you woke me. Glad to 
make friends and happy to see you at Paris, and 
forgive me ! Come early on Wednesday. God bless 
you, dear. Mind you write. 

" Ever your affectionate 

•* Car." 

The miracle of such a tone to a husband from whom 
she had received such brutal treatment — a husband 
against whom she had often expressed the bitterest 
resentment and contempt — is perhaps less amazing 



64 TRIP ABROAD— BRINSLEY'S MARRIAGE [chap, vi 

than the miracle it would have been for a woman like 
her, deeply affectionate and generous-hearted, to have 
gone on living with him year after year in the intimate 
relation of his wife, the mother of his children, the 
daily companion and sharer of his most serious 
interests and anxieties, without some moments of 
tenderness, of close rapprochement, without, it may 
be, some moments of genuine passion. 

The appearance of the three beautiful Sheridans 
made quite a furore in the French capital. 

Henry Greville, a brother of Charles, in a description 
of the citizen King Louis Philippe and his Court, 
concludes : 

^^ November 27. — In the evening a good many English 
came to be presented at the Tuileries— among them 
the three Sheridan sisters : when they came in the 
King exclaimed, ' What a batch of them ! ' " 

Mr, Greville went to a dinner at the Granvilles' a 
few days later and sat next Mrs, Norton, who was 
very amusing. " Her beauty and that of Lady Sey- 
mour make a prodigious sensation here," he remarks 
in his journal under that date. 

Lady Granville has her usual little slap to administer 
in a letter to her sister. Lady Carlisle. ** I will tell 
you how Norton behaves in my next. The French 
are sorry Blackwood goes to the Opera in a skull- 
cap." 

Lord Brougham was also in Paris — out of office, 
like all the other Whigs — and full of the story of 
the King's surprising dismissal of Lord Melbourne 
(who had been Prime Minister since Lord Grey's 
resignation in the spring of 1834); full of everything 
that had been going on in London during the autumn, 
from the burning of the Houses of Parliament to 
the Queen's part in the dismissal of the hated Whig 
Ministers ; " but writing as much as he talked, a 
sublime quack," remarked Lady Granville, as she tells 
her sister of his devotion to Mrs. Norton, Not to her 



1835] CHRISTMAS AT HAMPTON COURT 65 

alone, however. " He sits with Lady Clanricarde, — 
the Princess Belgioso, — Mrs. Norton, — two hours at a 
time in the morning." 

Lord Lyndhurst had succeeded Lord Brougham as 
Lord Chancellor of the new Peel Ministry, sometimes 
called the 100 days, as it held power only till the 
following April. Lord Lyndhurst is interesting to 
Americans as having been born in Boston while it 
was still a colony of Great Britain, in which town 
descendants of the Copley family still live. He had 
begun life as a Whig, and his enemies accused him 
of turning Tory, less from principle than for what 
it would bring him. But, Whig or Tory, he was 
always a warm friend of the Sheridan sisters, especially 
Caroline ; and more was to be hoped from him in the 
way of her husband's advancement than ever could be 
obtained from Brougham, or even Lord Melbourne, 
whose initial act of benevolence to Mr. Norton 
threatened to be his last. 

All the family spent Christmas with Mrs. Sheridan 
at Hampton Court after the various separations which 
had made the deserted nursery seem such a mournful 
place to Georgie Sheridan. Even Frank was back 
from Ireland with his chief. Lord Mulgrave, out of 
office for the moment with the rest of Melbourne's 
Government. A letter from Mrs. Norton to her 
husband, still in the spirit of their last reconciliation, 
gives an account of her plans and interests in the 
coming year. 

'■''January i. 

" My dearest Geordie, 

" I wish there were franks, but there are none 
now to make a stupid letter tolerable. I am very 
much vexed about poor Charlie, who has been in his 
bed these three days ; and Fincham (the apothecary) 
says he requires the greatest care. I have made tea 
for him these two past evenings ; he is quite low and 
dull, and Frank does not seem to think much about 
him. To-day is the ist of January, so before I go 
further let me wish you a Happy New Year, and 



66 TRIP ABROAD— BRINSLEY'S MARRIAGE [chap, vi 

many of them, dear Geordie, in quietness and comfort 
at home, and what prosperity may chance abroad. I 
have sat the whole day with Heath [the publisher 
of the Keepsake and English Annual] ; Reynolds 
[editor for the English Annual for 1836]; also Lord 
Mulgrave. I have taken the editorship of the Keep- 
sake, and Mr. Heath informed me of what he was 
pleased to call a horrible attempt on the part of 
Mr. Bull, Holies Street, and an actionable offence, 
l^his was that it seems Bull has published and cun- 
ningly sent to Paris, an annual called the English 
Annual, and on which is impudently printed ' Edited 
by Mrs. Norton.' I have sent for the book, and 
expressed the utmost indignation and astonishment. 
I shall give you an amusing account of this interview 
when we meet. Nothing is droll upon paper, and 
one can't write down the tone of voice in which a 
thing was said. Heath seemed struck with my per- 
sonal charms, and requested me to sit to Ross for 
next year's * Book of IBeauty,' which I agreed to do. 
Lord Melbourne has lent me a curious book (Dr. 
Lardner's Letters), in which the Doctor proves that 
Mary Magdalen was the most virtuous of her sex. I 
have not yet looked at it, as I do not wish to lose 
the post to you, but am very curious to see it proved. 
I was showing the opera-glass you gave me to the 
boys, and Brinny said, 'What do you see?' 'I see 
your dear little dirty face,' quoth 1 ; I then handed 
it to him, and said, ' What do you see ? ' * I see your 
dear big dirty face,' said he. Wasn't it quick and 
funny? The other laughed amazingly at this filial 
impertinence. Spencers good things I must not 
omit. We were sitting with Charlie, and he was dull. 
* Now,' says he, ' let's resign.' ' What do you mean ?' 
said L ' People says resign when they goes out,' 
quoth he. So much for living with Ministers ! With 
these anecdotes I conclude my shabby little letter, 
hoping to hear from you that any little unpleasantness 
brought you by Grantley when you thought you were 
doing for the best is over and explained away. The 
boys send their love. Brin says gravely, * Have you 
told Papa about your poor little sick brother ? ' 
"Yours ever affectionately, 

"C. 



i83S] LETTER TO LADY SEYMOUR 67 

" Mamma begs you to drink melted gum from 
Arabia in all your drinks. Take care, dear Geordie." 

She tells another funny story about this same little 
Brinsley, in a letter to her sister written later in the 
year from Richmond, where she had been " taking a 
tiny frisk of three days at the Star and Garter." 

" I took Brinsley to Richmond, and the first day he 
walked out he saw a fat sow eating cabbage. He 
struck with a stick against the sty and called out, * You 
fat pig, you is eating too much.' He continued his 
walk and returning by the sty, peeped in. The sow 
was asleep, but Erin thought she was dead, and shook 
his head mournfully. ' The great pig is dead, poor 
sing ! He is dead. I knowed he was eating too much. 
I said : * You is eating too much,' and he wouldn't be 
dood. Oh, the poor sing! " 

The next event of importance among the Sheridan 
brothers and sisters was the runaway marriage of 
Brinsley Sheridan and Miss Marcia Grant, only 
daughter of an old Waterloo officer. Sir Colquhoun 
Grant, an heiress in her own right. The whole his- 
tory of the elopement was like a leaf from the great 
Sheridan's personal history, or a page from one of his 
comedies. Whether rightly or wrongly however the 
praise or blame of the achievement fell less on the 
eloping bridegroom than on his three sisters. 

" Were the laws of witchcraft still enforced in 
England, these beautiful sisters would stand a chance 
of being burned at the stake. To these three sisters, 
as to the three fates, the world of fashion attribute the 
working of that mysterious spell which caused a 
young heiress to marry according to her own inclina- 
tions." 

Such was the notice that appeared in one of the 
fashionable journals on May 23, 1835, by which time 
the news of this runaway marriage had become public 
property. Certainly, Mrs. Norton and Lady Seymour 



68 TRIP ABROAD— BRINSLEY'S MARRIAGE [chap, vi 

had to bear more of the serious consequences to this 
tragi-comic affair than cither of the principal actors in 
it. Sir Colquhoun Grant was at Poole as candidate 
for a contested election on the day his daughter ran 
off to Scotland with Mr. Sheridan. But he had left 
his kinsman, Sir Robert MacFarlane, to look after his 
daughter in his absence, and as soon as this gentleman 
heard of the young lady's disappearance, he hastened 
to Spring Gardens and demanded to see Lady Seymour 
— refusing to be denied ; and at last forced his way 
upstairs, where he found further proof of the justice 
of his suspicions, in the group assembled in the 
drawing-room — Mrs. Sheridan, Mrs. Blackwood, and 
Mr. and Mrs. Norton, besides Lady Seymour and her 
husband, " In whose presence," to quote from the 
challenge which Sir Colquhoun Grant afterwards sent 
Lord Seymour, " Sir R. MacFarlane required of your 
wife intelligence of my daughter's flight. This in your 
hearing Lady Seymour refused, and you did not insist 
on her answering." 

In the course of the next three weeks Sir Colquhoun 
Grant had challenged and fought a duel with Lord 
Seymour. He had also informed George Norton that 
only his position of magistrate saved him, too, from 
being called on for the same satisfaction for his own 
and his wife's connection with the matter. Mr. 
Norton hastened in a long and somewhat laboured 
reply to explain his presence in Spring Gardens on the 
night of the elopement, as in no way connected with, 
indeed, in entire ignorance of, his brother-in-law's in- 
tentions. He had, in fact, dropped in after dinner to 
get his wife, who was going on with him to Lansdowne 
House, and had been informed of what had taken place, 
only a few moments before the arrival of Sir Robert 
himself. But Sir Colquhoun continued unappeased, 
and for a little while it seemed possible that the whole 
Sheridan connection would have to stand a prosecution 
for conspiracy. " Should this succeed," remarked a 
flippant society journal, " all the members of a 



1835] CHARACTER Ol- I5RINSLRY SHERIDAN 69 

talented laniily iiuisl compose their minds and their 
poetry in j^rison for a year or more." 

Brinsley had to cut short his honeymoon at Netlierby, 
lent by Sir James Graham for the occasion, and appear 
in London in answer to a summons of Chancery on a 
charge of abduction, brouglit against iiim by his irate 
father-in-law. But, to quote again from the Court 
Journal : 

** In all the attemjHs made to cast blame on the parti- 
cipants no word has been spoken against the character 
and conduct of young Sheridan. It is in evidence that 
he is gifted with singular personal advantages, rich in 
the endowments of a cultivated mind and liriiliant 
talents, and tliat he is well, if not nobly connected, his 
mother being own cousin to the Marchioness of 
Londonderry. Fortune was all he wanted." 

No runaway match indeed ever turned out better. 
No coui)le were ever more truly attached to each 
other, or lived afterwards in closer union. And even 
Sir Colquhoun did not long delay his reconciliation 
witii his son-in-law, and when he died, the following- 
December, his Dorsetshire estate and much of his 
other property descended to his daughter, besides the 
large fortune; which slu; ali-c\idy possessed. It may be 
added that Brinsley Sheridan had no debts to cause 
any inroads on that fortune. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE WIFE — MRS. NORTON LEAVES HER HUSBAND 

Mrs. Norton's first long novel made its appearance 
the same spring as her brother's elopement. Her own 
and her publishers' expectations for it may be seen in 
the following extract from a letter to her sister : 

" My book comes out on Wednesday, and I will have 
it sent down to you immediately. Nothing can be 
more gentlemanlike than they (the publishers) have 
been to me. I had, you know, ;^ioo conditional on a 
second edition ; well, they said they should be loth 
to pay me so bad a compliment as to leave what 
implied a doubt of my success and their own, and 
gave me the whole ;^300 instead of ;^2oo, and I am much 
pleased. In spite of my oaths against writing, when 
they offered me ;if5oo clear and unconditional on 
delivery of the MS. of 'Erbenfeldt' next January, 
I became tempted. ' In short, I fell,' as they say in the 
' Man of Honour,' and I have signed an agreement to 
do so. I read ' Erbenfeldt ' again, and am vexed to see 
how much better I wrote then, when I had not scribbled 
so much, or so much against the grain. I find a volume 
and a half (nearly) is already done, and of course I am 
glad to know that the enforced labour which you and 
Seymour put me to before my Bradley meals is not to 
be wasted ' entirely.' " 

But her own and her publishers' expectations for 
her future in this new field of literary work were 
doomed to disappointment. Her " Erbenfeldt " never 

70 



1835] LETTER FROM LORD MELBOURNE 71 

saw the light, was probably still unfinished when its 
author went down into that sea of misfortune which, 
for a time at least, overwhelmed so many of her hopes 
and ambitions. But even if the MS. had been delivered 
according to contract on the first of the following 
January, it is not likely that her publishers would 
have wished to produce it after the comparative 
failure of her first novel, of which I can find no record 
except a few very sharp reviews and one small edition, 
long out of print. 

Yet, in spite of its lack of commercial success, this 
novel showed a decided advance, from a literary point 
of view, upon the short stories and sketches hitherto 
signed with her name. 

" The Wife and Woman's Reward " is not one 
story, but two quite separate tales, published together 
in the usual three volumes of fiction. The first is an 
account of the extraordinary devotion of an elder 
sister for a brother, left to her care by a dying father. 
Lord Melbourne's criticism in one of his letters to 
the author is interesting in his recognition of some 
of the characteristics of the unpleasant brother as 
borrowed from George Norton. 

" I have been reading your book, and have finished 
the second volume. It's full of most excellent things. 

Lionel is too d d a beast, and Mary makes a great 

deal too much sacrifice for him, but it is not unnatural. 
Many people have acted as amiably, as romantically, 
and as foolishly. I think, in order to take advantage of 
what you have observed in other people's characters 
you have put into his what did not belong to it. For 
instance, his being so disagreeable upon the journey 
— calculating the currency, and admiring nothing 
fine and beautiful either in nature or art — is what 
has struck you in others and you have grafted it 
on him." 

The following is one of the passages referred to : 

'• He was continually occupying himself with trivial 
anxieties which for the time assumed an intense 



^2 THE WIFE [chap, vii 

importance. Restless and wretched, he fidgeted 
about all the little events and minor details of their 
journey. He spent the first two stages of every day's 
journey in counting over again the bills which had 
already been paid, and consulting different estimates 
of the different rates of the currency in the countries 
they were to pass through. He was always looking 
for a lost book, or a mislaid paper knife, or an un- 
discoverable travelling cap : always wondering whether 
the road they were going was really and actually the 
best road to the place of their destination, and calcu- 
lating what hour they should arrive ; always abusing 
the last hotel-keeper and swearing against the bore of 
a long journey." 

But though Mrs. Norton here stands convicted of 
using her nearest and those who ought to have been 
her dearest for literary copy, she was no more sparing 
of herself in the same cause. The following little 
speech which an old lady who lives in Spring Gardens 
addressed to Mary, the heroine of the *' Woman's 
Reward," might easily be addressed to her own 
experience : 

'* I do not think, my dear, that I am so selfish as to 
wish you had drollery. It is so rare, drollery, as you 
term it, or even wit is seemly or graceful in a young 
woman ; the proneness to satire, the temptation to 
caricature make it at best a dangerous talent ; a 
thousand sayings are attributed to you which you 
know nothing of, and the reputation of being witty 
converts slight acquaintances into bitter enemies. 
Indeed, I think the less brilliant a woman's q^ualities 
and talents are, the better for her peace of mmd and 
respectability through life. 

" Consider how easy it is to create a laugh. There 
is scarcely any subject, however serious, that may not 
be so treated as to be made ridiculous ; coarseness of 
expression and licence of thought, abuse of one's 
neighbour, or immoral boasting, has been mistaken 
for wit. And those who laugh do not always 
approve. 

'* There is no quality which has so little the power 
of converting its admirers into friends. 



i83S] THE WIFE 73 

" I recollect when I was young, I was remarked for 
this very talent — a talent the less to be envied, since 
it required merely high spirits, a desire to shine, and a 
moderate share of intellect in its possessor. My 
sayings were quoted ; I was thought amusing ; I made 
repartees to my enemies, and narrated stories for my 
friends ; and I assure you that many an hour of self- 
reproach followed those momentary triumphs, that I 
would have given worlds to recall some stinging 
reproach or light observation, and would rather have 
been reckoned dull than had that reputation (which I 
had) of being capable of giving up my dearest friend 
for the sake of a oon mot." 

The second of these two tales has an extraordinary 
resemblance to Mrs. Norton's own early life. A young 
and beautiful woman married to a man she did not 
love ; a bride in London society, where the interest she 
excited ** was not sympathy or kindness, or even 
curiosity, but a hard, unindulgent speculation as to 
what were her motives in the match, and what will be 
her conduct in the position in which she has placed 
herself." It is impossible for a woman having so 
lately undergone an almost parallel experience not 
to have drawn from her own heart the following 
description of the young wife's restless unhappiness 
during the first years of her married life : 

** Many and many a day after that one which sealed 
her fate, it seemed to be a dream that she was indeed 
a wife, and she would start from her uneasy sleep 
with a vague feeling of remorse and regret, or that 
still vaguer sensation which comes upon us after 
great sorrow — the consciousness that we have some 
cause for grief, without the perfect memory of what 
it is. Then, as gradually the whole truth became 
present to her mind, she would close her eyes and 
strive to sleep again, to dream that she was free — 
sometimes the effort would succeed, wild, wandering 
visions would give her back all the bartered liberty of 
her youth ; the days would return when she had still 
the power to choose, and to refuse ; and she started 
and shrank to find how bitter was the waking which 

10 



74 THE WIFE [chap, vii 

brought back the truth to her heart. But oftener, 
far, far oftener, sleep refused its peace to her weary 
lids, and she remained, her eyes opened wide upon 
the cold blank darkness, reflecting on the change that 
had taken place in her destiny, while a strange, 
startled feeling chilled her heart ; and bitter was the 
agony with which, hiding her weeping face in her 
pillow, she murmured, ' I have sinned and deeply am 
I punished. Dreams comfort me in vain, I wake, I 
live, and I am bound for ever, and ever, and ever.' It 
was a heavy lead-like feeling." 

The story still continues its self-revealing tone as it 
recounts Susan Dalrymple's social successes : 

" Princes praised, poets flattered, and painters 
sketched her ; and her heart, restless and dissatisfied, 
gave itself up to the pleasures of the world, feeding 
its quenchless thirst at that fountain which never yet 
calmed or comforted — the glittering spring of vanity." 

There is an account of her return after one of these 
evenings of social triumph, the deep depression that 
overtakes her as she sits afterwards alone in her 
room, gazing into her mirror — 

" On her face reflected in that glass, and while she 
felt her possession of beauty such as is rarely 
bestowed, she also felt that it had never been to her 
other than a curse and a temptation ; with attraction 
enough, indeed, to burden her heart with bad men's 
sighs, but no power over those she wished to charm, 
like a demon gift which, with all the promise and 
appearance of gain, is somehow unaccountably made 
to turn to the disadvantage and ruin of its possessor. 
How often in the real world does this mockery of 
success attend us ? How often are we envied for the 
sake of what, after all, is but a demon gift i " 

Glenalton, the husband in the story, has very little 
resemblance to George Norton, except in his jealousy 
and in sudden accidental touches here and there in 
response to the evident likeness between George 



1835] MISS VAUGHAN 75 

Norton's own wife and Susan Dalrymple. A cousin 
of the husband's comes at last to live with them, an 
older woman, who soon obtains an amazing influence 
over both husband and wife, until Susan suddenly 
finds that her husband's feelings are being alienated 
from her, alienated just as she herself has begun to 
love him. It is at this point that all resemblance 
between the story and real life abruptly ceases. The 
heroine accidentally discovers the machinations of this 
false friend, and makes them useless by a frank appeal 
to her husband's real affection for her, which has 
persisted through all misunderstandings. " It would 
be needless to describe the scene of reconciliation 
between those divided hearts. Suffice it that peace 
and happiness were restored, and the trials to which 
Susan Dalrymple's rashness and imprudence had 
subjected her were ended for ever." When these 
words were written Mrs. Norton's own future still lay 
upon the knees of the gods. Her work is often 
blamed as too sad — even for truth. A comparison 
between this first attempt at sustained fiction and her 
next novel, written nearly twenty years later, makes 
one feel that it was her own true experience that made 
her later fiction so sad. 

Who was the prototype of the false woman friend 
who worked such harm to Susan in the story of "The 
Wife," or if there was any prototype at all, it is im- 
possible of course at this late date to tell. There was, 
however, this type, slender, subtle, designing, running 
through more than one of Mrs. Norton's later stories, 
till it reaches perfection in Alice, the half-sister of 
Sir Douglas, in the novel of that name. And there 
was a woman who might have given some material 
for it, older than Caroline, older probably than her 
husband — a kinswoman of his whom he mentions 
jokingly to his wife as early as 1834 as having shown 
a flattering preference for himself. This lady had 
estates in Yorkshire, but she lived in London, at No. i, 
Lower Berkeley Street, Manchester Square. Her age 



V6 Till': WII'K [chap. VII 

;iii(l iclationsliii) willi Mr. Norton pcnnillcd her lo j^o 
and come in hi.s house, and to interfere with lier advice 
helween him and hi.s wife, who may first liave been 
in(hffi-r(;nt, even friendly, hut wiio soon eame to dread 
;m(l resent this eonneetion with her luisband as 
(l;in,L;("i-ous and inimical to herself. Indeed this woman 
w;is one of the princijial causes of the bitter ([uarrel 
which at last l)rouji;'ht this unhap])y marriiij^c to an 
end. l<'or the mutual fi^ood-fei^linjjj with which husband 
and wife had bcf^un the yc^ar 1.S35 was soon over- 
clouded with fresh misundc'rstanding. It is impossible 
to do more than f^uess at what it was that caused her 
to wish to leave him attain, but it was (evidently some- 
thing;- more than the physical violence, which seems 
hitherto to have l)i:en her worst complaint aj^ainst 
him ; something which roused her lo an intolerably 
bitter sense of outrage, and made her own family — 
wiiiU; still willing enough to shelter Iut — decline all 
furliier personal relations with him; which made her 
actually leave h(>r husband's house for lu-r sister's, 
with the avowed intention, sup[)orted by all her 
family, of never going back to him. She dates this 
de|)artui'e vaguc^ly as some tinu; in the early summer. 
But whatever had i)een George Norton's treatment of 
her to drive her to such a step, the taking of it evidently 
brought him to his senses again. He besieged her 
with lettcn-s, imploring hcv to return to him. He 
aba.sed himself before her, declaring himself utterly in 
the wrong, and n;ady to make every amends in his 
power, if she would only have mercy and forgive. 
His ai)peal had its usual vW'crl upon her. She had 
mercy, she forgave him. Against the advice of nearly 
every friend she had, she went back to him, and never 
was woman more bitterly i)unished than she for the 
unwise generosity of that decision. 

Till that moment she had known very little of her 
husband's pcn^uniary resources except how much she 
herself had contributed to llum; but on her return, 
with a view i)erhai)s of urging her to further eflorts 



^>- 




I (XA.xr4,v^.-v_A^ 7 



WTrrv. 



0C 



I). 1<A 



1835] MONEY MATTERS 77 

in his behalf, he took her, to a certain extent, into 
his confidence in this matter. For some time, indeed, 
he had been in desperate straits for money — such 
straits, that he seems to have grown indifferent to the 
means by which he might relieve them. For instance, 
one of the reasons he advanced to engage his wife's 
patience towards his kinswoman. Miss Margaret 
Vaughan, whose interference in his household had 
already excited her resentment, was that he hoped to 
get some pecuniary advantage from this lady, both 
before and after her death. Mrs. Norton discovered, 
to her astonishment, that even in drawing up her own 
marriage settlement there had been some deception or 
concealment, and that he or his lawyers or his elder 
brother, who was his trustee, had also deceived her 
mother in the amount of the portion accruing to the 
younger brothers and sisters of Lord Grantley; con- 
sequently he (George Norton) had never possessed the 
income accredited to him. 

She tells how she herself went at last to her father's 
old friend, the great Whig adviser, Robert Ellice, for 
advice in these perplexities, and received from him the 
opinion that if Mr. Norton's embarrassments were to 
be relieved through her friends, it must be on con- 
dition that she, not he, was to have the future manage- 
ment of his affairs. It is hardly likely that husband 
and wife were agreed on this particular method which 
she took to help him out of his difficulties. All the 
old ill-feeling between them was soon revived, and 
his conduct towards her was such that from sheer 
despair she fell ill — a long, dreary illness, during 
which she lost the child which was to have been 
born to her that autumn — while he went off, as 
usual, to his sister. Lady Menzies, for the shooting, 
leaving her so scantily supplied with money for her 
immediate necessities that, without her brother's 
assistance, she would have hardly known what 
to do. 

Later in the autumn she herself went away, taking 



;8 THE WIFE [chap, vii 

her three children for a visit to her sister, Lady 
Seymour, in the country, leaving him alone at Storey's 
Gate till late in January, while she enjoyed the only 
happiness she ever could reckon on in her troubled 
married life, the undisturbed possession of and delight 
in her little boys — for the very last time, poor woman ! 
if she had only known it. These boys were (as she 
herself expressed it) '* the gleam of happiness and 
compensation in her life." Her love of all children 
was one of the most characteristic traits of her nature ; 
her love for her own seems to have called forth the 
best she had to give. 

She describes them one after another, as they 
came to her, in the verses " The Mother's Heart," first 
published in 1840: 



" When first thou earnest, gentle, shy, and fond, 
My eldest-born, first hope, and dearest treasure, 
My heart received thee with a joy beyond 
All that it yet had felt of earthly pleasure ; 
Nor thought that any love again might be 
So deep and strong as that I felt for thee. 

"Then thou, my merry love, bold in thy glee, 
Under the bough, or by the firelight dancing. 
With thy sweet temper, and thy spirit free, 
Didst come, as restless as a bird's wing glancing ; 
Full of a wild and irrepressible mirth. 
Like a young sunbeam to the gladdened earth. 

" And thine was many an art to win and bless. 

The cold and stern to joy and fondness warming ; 
The coaxing smile, the frequent soft caress. 

The earnest, tearful prayer all wrath disarming. 
Again my heart a new affection found. 
But thought that love with thee had reached its bound. 

"At length thou camest, thou the last and least, 

Nicknamed 'The Emperor' by thy laughing brothers. 
Because a haughty spirit swelled thy breast, 
And thou didst seek to rule and sway the others ; 
Mingling with every playful infant wile 
A mindful majesty that made us smile. 



1835] MOTHER AND CHILDREN 79 

" Different from both, yet each succeeding claim, 
I, that all other love had been foreswearing, 
Forthwith admitted, equal and the same ; 
Nor injured either, by this love's comparing, 
Nor stole a fraction from the newer call, 
But in the mother's heart found room for all." 

These boys were with her as much as her busy life 
made possible. She drew pictures for them and of 
them, and wrote them songs and sang to them. Long 
years after, when they had all ceased to be children, 
she describes some of these moments together in verses 
so touching and so little known that I cannot refrain 
from quoting these few lines from a long poem " To 
my Piano " : 



" Sweet wert thou. Music, in the old bright days, 
Ere the home circle was a vanished dream, 
When I sate young, by my own hearth fire's blaze, 
And little children frolicked in its beam. 

" Sweet wert thou when I saw those merry feet 
Dance by the firelight on the radiant floor ; 
Restless as motes in sunbeams, and as fleet, 
They clapped their soft small hands and shouted, ' More.' 

"While flickering flames laughed out an answering smile 
Upon their glowing cheeks and foreheads fair, 
And threads of gold seemed twined among their curls 
Of tangled and disturbed yet shining hair." 

The thought of these children no doubt often pro- 
tected and steadied her in the many temptations of 
her married life. For in those days a woman who left 
her husband, even if after a divorce she was married 
by her seducer and lived ever after a perfectly respect- 
able life, was seldom permitted to see the children 
she had borne to her first husband, for a week, a day, 
an hour even, through the years that might intervene 
before they grew into independent men and women. 
Indeed, the women who ran away from their husbands 
in those days must have been very silly or very 
desperate creatures, so far more cruel was their 



8o THE WIFE [chap, vii 

position than that of those women who could 
manage to keep their lovers and remain only 
suspected of infidelity to their husbands, as long 
as these latter did not withdraw their nominal 
protection. 

Soon after Mrs. Norton's return to town from her 
stay with her sister, Lady Seymour, her eldest boy 
had been taken ill with scarlatina, "annihilating" 
all his mother's other engagements for a time, as 
she explains in one of her little notes to Babbage. 
But he was better at last, and it was for him especially 
that she was looking forward to a visit at Frampton 
Court, the house of her brother Brinsley, to which 
all the Sheridan connection had been asked for the 
coming Easter. I prefer to continue this narrative 
in her own words, written many years later indeed, 
and in a spirit of bitterness and hard finality, which at 
the time these events took place she was very far from 
feeling, yet always the best evidence of what actually 
took place on this occasion. 

" I was then on perfectly friendly terms with Mr. 
Norton. . . . He had written me while I was at my 
sister's [Lady Seymour's] at Christmas, urging me to 
try both with Lord Melbourne and Lord John Russell 
to get an appointment given to his friend. He never 
opposed in any way my plans for the Easter holiday, 
but, on the contrary, urged me, now we were friends, 
to overrule my brother's objections to receive him, and 
get him also invited, in which attempt I did not succeed. 
On the day previous to that on which I was to leave 
town I returned from my drive and found Miss Vaughan 
had called in my absence, and remained closeted with 
my husband for some time. Lord Melbourne was 
with him when I came in ; and they were talking 
together. After Lord Melbourne left, Mr. Norton 
talked discontentedly of the appointment, and angrily 
at my not getting that and other pecuniary interests 
arranged for him. He also said Miss Vaughan had 
told him if he himself was not noticed by my brother 
he ought not to submit to my going to his house with 
my children. I said nothing should prevent my going 



1836] QUARREL ABOUT THE CHILDREN 81 

to my brother ; that it was Mr. Norton's own fault he 
was not on terms with my family ; that the doctor had 
ordered change of air for the elder child, who was 
recovering from scarlatina, and that I should give my 
servants orders to refuse Miss Vaughan admittance to 
my house, as she laboured always for mischief, in spite 
of my patience with her. We parted angrily, Mr. 
Norton to dine with the Chief Magistrate, Sir Frederick 
Roe, I to dine with Lady Mary Fox.^ We spent the 
evening together at a party at Colonel Leicester Stan- 
hope's, and returned home together. The dispute was 
then renewed whether under the circumstances I should 
go to my brother's. Mr. Norton's last words were, 
' Well, the children shall not ; that I have determined,' 
and as he entered the house he desired the servant to 
unpack the carriage (which had been prepared for 
starting) and take the children's things out, for that 
they were not going. He then went up to the nursery 
and repeated the order to the nurse. It was admitted 
at the trial that the sole observation I made on this 
occasion when the nurse asked me what she was to do 
was that Mr. Norton's orders must be obeyed. I neither 
braved him with useless words nor complained." 

But she was not a person to submit meekly to 
a tyrannical decree — and she was neither calm nor 
submissive when her maid helped her to dress and 
let her out of the front door the next morning before 
seven o'clock, to hurry across the Park in the grey 
London twilight, to her sister's house in Spring 
Gardens. 

" While I was with my sister, the man-servant (from 
Storey's Gate) came to me and said that something was 
going wrong at home — that the children, with their 
things, had been put into a hackney-coach and taken 
away, he did not know where. I had the children 
traced to Miss Vaughan's house, and followed them. 
Anything like the bitter insolence of this woman — 
who thought she had baffled and conquered me for 
life — I never experienced ; she gave vent to the most 
violent and indecent answers to my reproaches, and 

' A daughter of William IV. and Mrs. Jordan. 

II 



82 THE WIFE [chap, vii 

said that if I troubled her further she would give me 
into the hands of the police." 

She did, however, manage to see her children's 
nurse, and to entreat her to stay with the children 
as long as she was permitted to do so, whatever 
else should happen to them. She then went on alone 
to her brother's place in the country, having already 
made up her mind never to return to her husband's 
house. Indeed, the time had come when living to- 
gether any longer was equally impossible for both 
of them. If she had returned she would have found 
the door barred against her — and George Norton's 
next step to make the breach between them as 
impassable and public as possible was to advertise 
her in all the daily papers as having left his roof, and 
himself as no longer liable for her debts — an action 
quite unheard of in his class of society, useless from 
a legal point of view, and an unmerited insult to the 
woman who was still his wife and the mother of his 
children, whose name was thus cast to all the scandalous 
newspapers and gossips of the metropolis to be treated 
as they would. 

The Age and the Satirist, two of the most scurrilous 
newspapers of the day, were soon busy at work with 
the vilest kind of slander and innuendo ; not only 
against Mrs. Norton, but against her sisters, her 
brothers, her intimate women friends ; publishing 
paragraphs which keep one amazed how their editors 
were permitted to live from day to day without a 
horsewhipping from some protector of the women 
thus assailed by them. But the most ruthless enemies 
she found anywhere, whether public or private, were 
the members of her husband's family, especially her 
husband's elder brother, Lord Grantley. 

So active and malevolent was this nobleman's 
influence to prevent any favourable outcome from his 
brother's quarrel with his wife, that we are drawn 
to wonder what conduct of hers could ever have 



1836] LORD MELBOURNE 83 

fostered such a temper towards her. We know him, 
as he looked in later years, with a great soft beard 
and that false air of benevolence that goes with a 
broad, bald brow, in spite of the sensual little eyes 
underneath ; a man whose opinion of a woman's 
virtue must always have been influenced by his habit 
of considering any woman as a sort of prey. If there 
was ever a time when he had admired his beautiful 
young sister-in-law, it was long in the past. For some 
years, indeed, he had hardly seen her; and both he 
and his wife had always shown an indifference, 
amounting almost to dislike, to their three nephews, 
one of whom must succeed to the title in absence of 
children of their own. The brothers had been, in 
fact, for some time at open variance ; but all this was 
forgotten when George Norton came down to Wonersh 
Park with his three little boys soon after their mother's 
attempt to see them at Miss Vaughan's. When he 
went back to London he left them there safe behind 
those high brick walls and close-locked gates ; and 
never afterwards did he have a warmer counsellor 
and abettor than Lord Grantley in every plan he 
made in his anger to punish his wife for defying his 
commands. 

Lord Melbourne was still at his sister's country 
place of Panshanger, where he had gone to spend the 
Easter holiday while these events were taking place 
in town. Nothing can be more friendly, more 
affectionate, or less like a guilty lover who fears his 
guilt on the point of being found out than his almost 
daily letters to Mrs, Norton during this period. 

''Aprils, 1836. 

" I hardly know what to write to you, or what 
comfort to offer. You know as well as 1 do, that the 
best course is to keep yourself tranquil, and not to 
give way to the feelings of passion which, God knows, 
are too natural to be easily resisted. This conduct 
upon his part seems perfectly unaccountable, and, 
depend upon it, being as you are, in the right, it will 



84 THE AVIFE [chap, vii 

be made ultimately to appear, whatever temporary 
misrepresentations may prevail. You cannot have 
better or more affectionate advisers than you have 
with you upon the spot, who are well acquainted with 
the circumstances of the case and with the characters 
of those with whom they have to deal. You know 
that I have always counselled you to bear everything 
and remain to the last, I thought it for the best. I 
am afraid it is no longer possible. Open breaches of 
this kind are always to be lamented, but you have the 
consolation that you have done your utmost to stave 
this extremity off as long as possible." 

But any consolation she might have derived from 
the good opinion of her world in this public discussion 
of what had long been her private injuries was soon 
diminished by the vicious attack her husband, with 
the advice of his brother, Lord Grantley, proceeded 
to make against her reputation. She had been too 
widely admired, and, moreover, too imprudent in her 
conduct not to have laid herself open to suspicion in 
a thousand ways, if any one wished to take advantage 
of her. 

There was Mr. Trelawny, for instance, the friend 
of Byron and Shelley, a hero of the late Greek war, 
a genius, a writer, strikingly handsome, as he is 
described by Fanny Kemble, who also at one time 
excited his catholic fancy ; *' with a countenance 
habitually serene and occasionally sweet in its 
expression, but sometimes savage with the fierceness 
of a wild beast. His speech and movements were 
slow and indolently gentle, his voice very low and 
musical, and his utterance deliberate and rather 
hesitating ; he was very tall and powerfully made, 
and altogether looked like the hero of a wild life of 
adventure." 

Every one could remember how he had admired 
Mrs. Norton during the past season, how often they 
had been seen together; it was for compromising 
evidence with this gentleman among others that Lord 



1836] LETTER FROM LORD MELBOURNE 85 

Grantley advised his brother to search among the 
letters and papers his wife had left behind her in her 
unpremeditated departure of March 30. She had left 
everything behind her, even her wearing apparel, 
when she went away, so far was it from her mind at 
that time " never to come back." But all search seems 
to have been unavailing. 

Lord Melbourne's next letter to Mrs. Norton was 
written after the rumour got abroad of these attempts 
to compromise her. 

'' April Z, 1836. 

*' It is vain to rail, otherwise I could do so too : 
but it was at all times easy to see that it was the most 
dangerous and ill-conditioned creature possible, and 
that there was nothing that might not be expected 
from such a mixture of folly and malignity. I am very 
glad Charlie is gone down. You have now real friends 
about you. You describe me very truly when you say 
that I am always more annoyed that there is a row 
than sorry for the persons engaged in it. But, after 
all, you know you can count upon me. I wonder that 
you should think it possible that I should communicate 
your letters to any one else ; I have heard no one 
mention the subject. Lord Holland did, in one of his 
letters, and I answered him exactly to the effect you 
told me, as I must have done without being told, 
namely, that I had seen you with Norton the day 
before you left town, and that I knew that he was 
perfectly well acquainted with your intention of going 
mto the country, because he, in my hearing, suggested 
putting it off from Wednesday, I believe, till Saturday. 
1 have also seen one paragraph relating to the matter 
in one of the newspapers, and this is all that has 
reached me. I shall be in town again on Monday. 
Adieu. 

" Yours, 

" Melbourne." 

He resumes two days later in even greater indigna- 
tion at the malignant futility which marked this stage 
of George Norton's proceedings against his wife : 



86 THE WIFE [chap, vii 

'' April lo. 

" Never, to be sure, was there such conduct. 
To set on foot that sort of incjuiry without the 
slightest real ground for it ! But it does not surprise 
me. I have always known that there was there a 
mixture of folly and violence which might lead to any 
absurdity or any injustice. You know so well my 
opinion that it is unnecessary for me to repeat it. 
I have always told you that a woman should never 
part from her husband whilst she can remain with 
him. This is generally the case ; particularly so in 
such a case as yours, that is, in the case of a young, 
handsome woman of lively imagination, fond of com- 
pany and conversation, and whose celebrity and 
superiority has necessarily created many enemies. 
Depend upon it, if a reconciliation is feasible there 
can be no doubt of the prudence of it. It is so evident 
that it is unnecessary to expatiate upon it. Lord 
Holland, who is almost the only person who has 
mentioned the subject to me, is entirely of that 
opinion. 

" Yours, 

" Melbourne." 



The following letter still contemplates the possi- 
bility of a reconciliation. 

"South Street, .<4/rz7 ig, 1836. 

" If, for the sake of your children, you think you 
can endure to return to him, you certainly will act 
most wisely and prudently for yourself in doing so. 
I advise you, however, to take no step of yourself 
without the advice of Seymour and Graham ; and if 
you determine upon writing to Mr. Barlow, send 
your letter open to them, giving them a discretionary 
power either to send or withhold it. Keep up your 
spirits ; agitate yourself as little as possible ; do not 
be too anxious about rumours and the opinion of 
' the world ' ; being, as you are, innocent and in the 
right, you will in the end bring everything round. 

" Yours, 

" Melbourne." 



1836] MR. NORTON'S SUIT FOR DIVORCE 87 

But this last letter was in response to one from 
her in which she herself proposed to return to her 
husband, if he would receive her. She believed him 
unfaithful to her ; she knew that he was base, that far 
from being the injured husband he pretended, he had 
been far more ready than she ever was to traffic in the 
admiration excited by her among men who could do 
him favours ; but he was the father of her three little 
children, and a return to him seemed the quickest and 
surest way of making them hers again. She had been 
parted from them only three weeks, and already the 
agony of despair sounds through the letter she 
finally did write and was allowed to send to Mr. 
Barlow, the clergyman of the little Duke Street 
chapel where she and her husband went to church. 
Enough of this letter is quoted by Fitzgerald in his 
" Lives of the Sheridans " to show how ready she was 
to make any concession with this end in view. 

" She begs him to act as an intercessor, offering 
every kind of submission or amende that could be 
desired. If she had made any harsh speeches or 
declarations that she would not stay with Mr. Norton, 
she repented. All she asked was a year's trial in his 
company and that of her children. * An eternal separa- 
tion from them will kill me.' While as to the late 
imputations, she protested her complete innocence, 
offering piteously, if it pleased him, to admit folly and 
vanity and thoughtlessness." 

Her husband, however, did not want to take her 
back. He was already too far enveloped in an 
influence utterly unfriendly to her to show any mercy 
to her appeal. His answer was the announcement 
that he .was already decided to proceed to the last 
extremity against her — to divorce her. The first step 
on the part of the husband in an action for divorce 
in those days was to bring a civil suit for damages 
against the man he believed guilty of alienating his 
wife's affections. George Norton now declared he was 



88 THE WIFE [chap, vii 

about to bring such a suit, and no one was more 
struck with amazement and helpless indignation than 
his own wife when she heard that the person he had 
pitched upon for co-respondent was his late benefactor 
and her old friend, the Whig Prime Minister, Lord 
Melbourne. 

Almost any one else he might have chosen with a 
better show of a real grievance, for jealousy of Lord 
Melbourne had been the last feeling this friendship of 
his wife's had ever excited in him. On the contrary, 
from the first he had done everything in his power 
to foster their relation with one another. When Lord 
Melbourne was in the drawing-room, he had been 
known to deny her to members of her own family. 
When she was ill the spring after William's birth, and 
for a long time confined to her room upstairs, George 
Norton saw no reason why Lord Melbourne should 
not be admitted to see her there. And even in cases 
where a husband might justly have interfered, where 
her reckless disregard for the conventions of society 
laid her open, perhaps justly, to unfriendly criticism, 
as when, for instance, she went and saw Lord Mel- 
bourne alone at his own house, Mr. Norton often went 
with her, strolling across the bottom of the Park and 
leaving her at the official door in Downing Street. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE MELBOURNE TRIAL — HER STRUGGLE FOR THE 
POSSESSION OF HER CHILDREN 

There is another letter of Mrs, Norton's, written 
probably just before she received the notice of her 
husband's new attempt to destroy her reputation ; and 
though it has nothing directly to do with the matter 
which must have been absorbing her at that time, I 
insert it in its chronological order, as an illustration of 
one of the most beautiful traits of that many-sided 
character, a quality which never seemed to fall into 
abeyance, however confused and distracted with mis- 
fortune she herself might be — the desire to be of 
service, to be kind. 

It is written to Mrs. Shelley, in answer to a note 
from the poet's widow, sent after the death of William 
Godwin, April 7, 1836, before anything but a confused 
rumour of Mrs. Norton's trouble with her husband 
had got abroad, asking her to use her influence with 
the Prime Minister to have the pension of the old 
philosopher continued to his wife, whose sole support 
it was. This request was instantly complied with, 
and the following letter includes Lord Melbourne's 
reply to it : 

'' April 21, 1836. 

** I cannot give Mrs. Godwin any part of her 
husband's income, because the place is now abolished. 

89 12 



90 THE MELBOURNE TRIAL [chap, viii 

But if Mrs. Shelley will send me the case, I will try if 
I cannot give her some assistance. 

" Melbourne." 

Mrs. Norton's own letter is as follows : 

" Frampton, Dorchester, 
'' April 2\. 

" Dear Mrs. Shelley, 

*' I suppose Lord Melbourne proposes to make 
the Royal Bounty Fund available in the case of poor 
Mrs. Godwin, as in others where it has been difficult 
to arrange what should be done where a pension is 
impossible. Do not suppose that any worries of my 
own would ever prevent my doing what I could for 
any one, far less for you, of whom, though I know 
comparatively little, I have heard and thought a great 
deal. I shall be at my brother Brinsley's in Grosvenor 
Place to-morrow and during the week, so if you 
wish to address me a line on the subject of your 
petition to Lord Melbourne, it will find me there. 
But, indeed, I think you should want no advocate in 
such a cause, and if you do, there cannot be a better 
than yourself, the winning frankness of whose manner 
would please him, as I remember it enchanted me. 

"If you see Trelawny, remember me to him, and say 
that I have executed his wish with more alacrity than 
he has done mine ; and that I wish him to send my 
sketch-book, etc., to Grosvenor Square, or leave them 
there himself. 

" I know he has many things just now to attend to 
for other people, so I did not mean it as a reproach. I 
was glad Lady Dorothy Campbell won her cause ^ ; it 
is an unjust law which makes a mother's claim so 
vague. I trust your son is well, and in all ways a 
pleasure and comfort to you. 

" Yours very sincerely, 

" Caroline Norton." 

Lord Melbourne was able to make the Royal Bounty 
available for some years at least, and the service 
rendered at such a time is explanation enough for 
the exceeding intimacy of the later correspondence 

' A suit in Chancery for the possession of her children. 



1836] ATTEMPT TO RECOVER HER BOYS gi 

between two women who hitherto, as this letter 
itself declares, had known comparatively little of each 
other. 

One wonders, indeed, whether it does not give the 
date of an attempt which has passed into tradition in 
the little village of Wonersh — the tradition that once 
at least while the children were staying there, their 
mother came down from London to see them and try 
to carry them off; that with the help of one of the 
servants, perhaps, she managed to get through the 
usually close-barred gates unperceived ; that for a 
moment it almost seemed as if she would succeed in 
her desperate attempt. The scrap quoted by Fitzgerald 
among Mrs. Norton's letters to Mrs. Shelley relates as 
follows : 

" I failed. I saw them all ; carried Brin to the gate, 
could not open it, and was afraid they would tear him 
to pieces, they caught him so fiercely. And the elder 
one was so frightened he did not follow. It may be a 
sin, but I do curse them and their dogged brutality. 
If a strong arm had been with me, I should have done 
it. I tell you this because I know you have a real 
wish to know." 

A real wish to know, no doubt, and fewer reserves 
of sympathy than Mrs. Norton's own people, who 
could have hardly lent themselves to an attempt to 
kidnap her children without being prepared to meet 
the penalties of breaking the law of the land in which 
they lived, the English father's absolute right over 
his children being unaffected by any claims or wrongs 
on the part of the mother. 

But threatened as she was by the perpetual loss of 
her boys as well as of her reputation, by the suit 
her husband was preparing to bring against Lord 
Melbourne, the situation was almost as serious for the 
Prime Minister, who saw himself face to face with 
political ruin if the charges against him could be sub- 
stantiated. His first letter to Mrs. Norton after the 



92 THE MELBOURNE TRIAL [chap, viii 

news had reached him that he was to be the object of 
George Norton's next attack is anything but compli- 
mentary to that gentleman : 

" South Street, April 23. 

" I send you a letter which I wrote yesterday with 
the intention of sending it. I hope you will not take 
it ill if 1 implore you to try at least to be calm under 
these trials. You know that whatever is alleged (if it 
be alleged) is utterly false, and what is false can rarely 
be made to appear true. The steps which it will be 
prudent to take it will be impossible to determine 
until we know more certainly the course that is in- 
tended to be pursued. If any servant of mine, or any 
one that has left within the last six years, has been 
interrogated, I think I should have heard of it. But, 
whoever may be interrogated, no one can depose 
anything which can affect you or me." 

But his anxiety on the subject had much to do with 
the illness, serious enough to be mentioned in all the 
papers, which overtook him soon after writing this 
letter. Creevey speaks of it in his diary : 

" Melbourne has been very ill, but is better and will 
do. Young (his secretary) told me that he had been 
terribly annoyed by the Norton concern. The in- 
sanity of men writing letters in such cases is to me 
incomprehensible. She has plenty of Melbourne's 
and others, but according to what is considered the 
best authority, the Solicitor-General of the Tories, 
Follett, has saved Melbourne, though employed against 
him. Follett is said to have asked Norton if it was 
true that he had ever walked with Mrs. Norton to 
Lord Melbourne's house and then left her there. 
Upon Norton's saying that it was so, Follett told him 
there was an end of his action." 

The action did not end here, however. Lord 
Melbourne's next letter is in answer to a complaint 
from Mrs. Norton at having to submit to an insulting 
interview with the solicitor managing his case : 



1836] LETTER FROM LORD MELBOURNE 93 

"South Street, /««tf 9, 1836. 

" I have received your letter, and have given such 
instruction as I trust v^all be for the best. I do not 
wonder at the impression made upon you. I knew it 
would be so, and therefore I was almost unwilling to 
have the interview take place at all. All the attorneys 
I have ever seen have the same manner : hard, cold, 
incredulous, distrustful, sarcastic, sneering. They are 
said to be conversant in the worst part of human 
nature, and with the most discreditable transactions. 
They have so many falsehoods told them, that they 
place confidence in none. 

" I have sent your note, having read it. I daresay 
you think me unfeeling; but I declare that since I- 
first heard I was proceeded against I have suffered 
more intensely than I ever did in my life. I had 
neither sleep nor appetite, and I attributed the whole 
of my illness (at least the severity of it) to the 
uneasiness of my mind. Now what is this uneasiness 
for ? Not for my own character, because, as you 
justly say, the imputation upon me is as nothing. It 
is not for the political consequences to myself, 
although I deeply feel the consequences that my 
indiscretion may bring upon those who are attached 
to me or follow my fortunes. The real and principal 
object of my anxiety and solicitude is you, and the 
situation in which you have been so unjustly placed 
by the circumstances which have taken place." 

The trial came to a hearing on June 22 in a room of 
the old Westminster Courts of Law, since destroyed 
to make place for the new Houses of Parliament, the 
preliminary notice for it having been delayed till 
the last possible date permitted by the law — so 
constant was the hope in many quarters that it would 
finally be settled out of court. 

It was tried before Lord Chief Justice Tindal ; 
Sir William Follett, Solicitor-General for the Peel 
administration of 1835, being counsel for the plaintiff, 
while Sir John Campbell,^ Attorney-General under 

' Afterwards Lord Campbell, and author of " Lives of the Lord 
Chancellors." 



94 THE MELBOURNE TRIAL [chap, viii 

Melbourne, was for the defence, with Sir Frederick 
Thesiger and Thomas Noon Talfourd, two good 
Whig barristers, devoted to the administration, as 
assistant counsel. 

There had been great talk beforehand of com- 
promising letters by Lord Melbourne, which were to 
be produced in evidence against him ; but on the day 
of trial all that appeared were several little notes of 
the utmost brevity and unimportance. So in the 
end the case chiefly depended upon witnesses of 
low character, chiefly servants — a woman who had 
been discharged by Mrs, Norton for unchastity ; a 
footman who had been discharged by his master for 
his bad habits. The only respectable person among 
them was Martha Moore, then under-nurse to the 
three children, and she had nothing to tell except 
the mere fact of her mistress's departure from Storey's 
Gate on March 30. The others either broke down on 
cross-examination, or made out so weak a case that 
Sir John Campbell did not even call the witnesses for 
the defence with which he had come provided. He 
began his speech for the defence a little after six in the 
evening, and continued till nearly midnight. The jury 
pronounced for the defence without leaving the box, and 
the verdict was received with cheers, which sufficiently 
showed the temper of the crowded court-room. 
Indeed the feeling was already on the increase that 
the whole affair had been a shabby plot conceived by 
a few enemies of the Government to ruin the Whig 
Prime Minister ; and that the plaintiff's loss of his 
case was no more than he deserved under the circum- 
stances, while Lord Melbourne's acquittal was really 
a victory for his party. 

Sir John Campbell went immediately after the trial, 
late as it was, to the Commons, who were sitting, 
since the burning of the Houses of Parliament, in the 
crypt of St. Stephen's Church, where he was received 
with uproarious applause — only from the Whig 
benches, however. Lord Malmesbury gives a good 



1836] LETTER TO MRS. SHELLEY 95 

specimen of the animus the Tories still showed in 
the matter when he remarks in his diary that, as far 
as he could see, the trial had only shown that '* Mel- 
bourne had had more opportunities than any man 
ever had before and had made no use of them." 

Indeed that was all Sir John Campbell wished or 
meant to prove. It was none of his business to attack 
any part of the case against his client which touched 
only on the reputation of the woman who was just 
as much its victim. He was not her counsel ; indeed 
the woman in such a case had no counsel, not being 
a legal party in the suit. 

A ridiculous mistake occurs in Clayton's book on 
Rogers when the author says that the old poet 
accompanied Mrs. Norton into court on the first day 
of this trial. She never appeared in court. A letter 
of hers to Mrs. Shelley, written two days afterwards, 
tells where she was and what she was doing while 
her fate thus hung in the balance. 

" Hampton Court, 

" Saturday, June 25. 

" Dear Mrs. Shelley, 

" Thank you for writing to me. My friends 
are very kind, but it is impossible not to feel bitterly 
the disgusting details of that unhappy trial. You will 
see, if you have read it, that the girl Eliza Gibson 
deposes that every day, or generally every day during 
the months of July, August, and September 1833, I 
was occupied painting and sinning. In that August 
my youngest child was born, and during that 
September I was on the sofa, and when I was able 
to move I went to Worthing with my children. She 
says too that Mr. Norton examined her; and he 
allowed her evidence to be brought forward against 
me, knowing it not only to be a lie, but a lie which 
the parish register, or the nurse who sat in the 
witness-room, could contradict in a moment. 

" Well, a woman is made a helpless wretch by these 
laws of men, or she would be allowed a defence, a 
counsel, in such an hour. I was in Spring Gardens; 
I could send notes to disprove the evidence of each 



96 THE MELBOURNE TRIAL [chap, viii 

witness, and they were of no use unless they bore on 
the defendant's case. To go for nothing in a trial which 
decides one's fate for life is hard. However, it is past, 
and I am very thankful. I have not heard what is to 
become of my poor boys ; but I am not now obliged to 
remain inactive, as before. I have been very seriously 
ill ever since that day and half a night of terrible 
suspense. 

" I can say nothing more at present, therefore I will 
conclude by thanking you once more for the kind 
interest you have shown, and promising to send you 
news of what is settled to be done. I suppose your 
son is not with you yet. I hope he will always be a 
pleasure and a pride to you, who have so much of the 
mother in your heart ; and am (stupefied and beat), 

" Yours very truly, 

"Caroline Norton." 

Mr. Norton having thus failed in his suit for 
damages, was no longer in a position to continue his 
action to divorce his wife, and she was equally un- 
able to divorce him because, on returning to him in 
1835, a few months before their last quarrel, she had 
condoned all her husband's worst acts of cruelty and 
infidelity against her, and was no longer able to bring 
them up as evidence in her case before the courts. 

There was nothing left for them, therefore, but to 
find some terms for a legal separation. Such separa- 
tions differed practically very little from a divorce 
granted by Doctors' Commons, as the ecclesiastical 
divorce court was sometimes called. 

But while the judgment from the ecclesiastical 
courts could only be obtained at great expense, and 
on proof of unpardonable guilt on one side or the 
other, a legal separation could be entered into at will, 
on the mutual consent of the persons desiring it ; was, 
in fact, nothing more than a sort of legal arrangement 
by which a wife desirous of living apart from her 
husband had secured to her, either some part of her 
own property of which she had lost possession on her 
marriage (a married woman being by law incapable of 



1836] A LEGAL SEPARATION 97 

owning property apart trom her husband) or if she 
had no property of her own, an allowance large enough 
to enable her to subsist independently of her husband, 
in return for which he was free from liability for 
any debts she might contract over and above the 
sum agreed on between them. 

But the ecclesiastical courts so entirely disapproved 
of such arrangements, that the mere fact of some such 
understanding having once been entered into between 
two persons, if one of them should afterwards have 
occasion to plead for divorce, was considered ground 
enough for refusing it. 

There was this further disadvantage in the so-called 
legal separation that, being an instrument drawn up 
rather with the idea of circumventing than of being 
strictly guided by the law which denied independent 
legal existence to a married woman, it was always a 
question how far they would be recognised in the 
civil courts. They were, indeed, agreements made 
outside the courts, both ecclesiastical and of common 
law, for without a divorce the former had no right 
to compel a man to grant a wife an allowance or 
even a portion of her own property, if she found it 
necessary to live apart from him, and the latter could 
only compel him to support her if it could be proved 
that he had refused to receive her into his house, and 
that she was entirely without other means ot sub- 
sistence. 

George Norton was a lawyer, and he knew exactly 
how much and how little the law required of him. 
His first statement of what he proposed to do in this 
matter he sent to his wife's brother almost immedi- 
ately after his wife's departure from his house, and its 
terms were almost an insult, for he proposed to give 
her nothing at all — except immunity from his society. 
As for the rest, her family might support her, or she 
might earn her living by writing, while he kept the 
children entirely in his own hands, her access to them 
being dependent on his good pleasure. 

13 



98 THE MELBOURNE TRIAL [chap, viii 

After the trial he was constrained to offer an allow- 
ance of ;^3oo a year, still keeping in his hands the 
possession of all his children. 

She wrote entreating that she might be permitted to 
see them. The youngest was already in town, having 
been brought up by his nurse when she was called to 
testify at the trial. This child the mother was per- 
mitted to see at her brother's house for half an hour 
in the presence of his nurse and another of the 
women witnesses. He was only a baby, hardly more 
than two years old. He had not seen his mother for 
more than three months ; perhaps he hardly recog- 
nised her, so great was the change that had come over 
her beauty. She had to rush away into another room 
to struggle with her sobs and tears before she could 
force herself to the voice and manner which would 
make him prefer her arms to those of the woman who 
had so lately given outrageous testimony against her 
in the witness-box. 

But her request to see the other children was 
granted only on condition she came to the chambers 
of Mr. Norton's attorney, where they might be brought 
for half an hour by two of the women witnesses at 
the trial, who were ordered to remain in the room 
during the interview. To this proposition was 
appended a note by his own solicitor : 

" Mr. Norton has made the appointment to see the 
children here. I cannot but regret it." 

This offer she refused in a letter to her own legal 
adviser to be transmitted to her husband. 

" However bitter it may be to me, I must decline 
seeing my children in the manner proposed. I say 
nothing of the harshness — the inhumanity of telling 
me I must either see them at the chambers of his 
solicitor or not at all ; but I say it is not decent that 
the father of those children should force me, their 
mother, out of the very tenderness I bear them, to 
visit them at the chambers of the attorney who collected 



1836] EFFORTS TO SEE HER CHILDREN 99 

the evidence, examined the witnesses, and conducted 
the proceedings for the intended divorce. I say it is 
not decent — nay, that even if I were guilty, it would 
not be decent to make me such a proposition. But I 
am innocent. I have been pronounced and publicly 
declared innocent by the nobleman against whom that 
ill-advised action was brought. Why, then, are my 
children kept from me ? — from me whom even their 
own witnesses proved to be a careful and devoted 
mother. Mr. Norton says the law gives him my 
children. I know it does, but the law does no 
more ; it does not compel me to endure more than 
separation from them ; and sooner than allow them to 
connect my visits in their memory with secrecy and 
shame, I would submit never again to behold them till 
they were of an age to visit me without asking the 
permission of any human being." 

Eventually the children were allowed to come to 
her brother's house in Grosvenor Square — only for 
half an hour. 

She had not sufficiently recovered from the agitation 
the mere sight of them roused in her to speak to them 
as well as she could before the two vulgar, curious 
women, whose presence was a condition of the inter- 
view, before the time had elapsed ; and in spite of her 
entreaties for a moment more with them, they were 
hurriedly taken away. 

She met them once by stealth, as they were taking 
their morning walk in St. James's Park. She tells of 
this encounter somewhere. 

" My eldest, who is seven years old, gave me a little 
crumpled letter which he said he had had in his pocket 
a fortnight directed to me, but that none of the servants 
would put it in the post. He was so dear and in- 
telligent, and listened so attentively to all I said to 
him, that it was a great, though melancholy satis- 
faction to have had this interview. I know he will 
never forget me." 

But Miss Vaughan, to whose supervision the boys 
had again been entrusted by their father, found out this 



loo THE MELBOURNE TRIAL [chap, viii 

chance meeting and prevented it ever happening 
again, by taking them all to drive for some time 
before she let them out for their daily exercise. 

At another time their mother saw them at their own 
house, when their father was away, boldly knocking 
at the door, and making her entrance past the servants. 
But when she attempted it again, the footman, more 
influenced, no doubt, by the memory of his master's 
anger than by the desperate woman who was en- 
treating admittance, dropped the chain and roughly 
shut the door in her face. 

Too ill to try again, and hearing that the children 
were to be removed to Scotland, she sent word by 
her doctor begging to be allowed only to bid them 
farewell. To this she was vouchsafed no reply. 

*' She rose from her sick-bed, and wrapping herself 
in a cloak, proceeded to the St. Catherine Docks, to 
the Royal William steam vessel, by which she had been 
informed they were to start. She remained on the 
deck of the vessel some hours, till it sailed, watching 
the arrival of passengers on board, but the infants did 
not appear. Persons having been stationed to watch 
the other packet, Mrs. Norton learnt that her boys had 
gone by the Dundee in compan}^ with Lord Grantley, 
the only way to find out about them being by inquiry 
of the steward of the Dundee steamship." 

She had in the meantime written to her mother-in- 
law, with whom, till these events, she had always been 
on terms of affection and confidence — enclosing a note 
to the eldest child, and conjuring that lady to give it 
to him. To this no answer was sent. 

It was some time, indeed, before she could do more 
than guess where her boys were. They were finally 
sent to Loch Rannoch, under ,the care of their aunt, 
Lady Menzies, whom the two youngest had never even 
seen, so long had been the estrangement between the 
sisters-in-law. 

I quote Mrs. Norton's own words on this subject : 



1836] DEATH OF MISS VAUGHAN loi 

** There, with one whom I knew to be haughty and 
intemperate, those children were left, who had hitherto 
been so gently and tenderly treated ; the eldest of 
whom was delicate in health, sensitive in disposition, 
and just recovering from illness. The first step she 
made in their education was to flog this verj'' child 
(a child of six) for merely receiving and reading a letter 
from me (I being in England and he in Scotland), to 
impress on his memory that he was not to receive 
letters from me. Having occasion to correct one still 
younger, she stripped it naked, tied it to the bedpost, 
and chastised it with a riding whip." 

This first separation was only a temporary one, 
however. In December 1836 Miss Vaughan died, 
leaving to her cousin George Norton all her Yorkshire 
estates, with an income of nearly i^2,ooo a year. 
On her death, part at least of the strange unfriendly 
influence which had been driving him to such in- 
credible lengths against an innocent woman — a woman 
he had once tenderly loved — seemed suddenly to have 
been removed. 

In the spring ot the following year Mrs. Norton 
received a letter from him asking her to come to 
see him in Miss Vaughan's old house. No. i, Lower 
Berkeley Street, then standing empty. This she 
refused to do, but consented to see him in his own 
house (he had given up Storey's Gate, and was living 
at 10, Wilton Place). 

There the husband and wife had a long and pain- 
ful interview, during which he, with perhaps pardon- 
able treachery to his late advisers, confessed that he 
himself had never believed the charges he had per- 
mitted to be brought against her, and that the suit 
had been urged against his will. He begged her to 
come back to him ; and though she did not immediately 
consent to this, she did not entirely refuse. 

She took immediate advantage of his temporary 
softening to her, however, to obtain that her children 
should be sent for from Scotland to be with their 
father in Wilton Place, and to see them and take them 



102 THE MELBOURNE TRIAL [chap, viii 

to drive with her every day. At the same time, 
she and George Norton also saw and wrote to each 
other, letters often affectionate on his part, sometimes 
reiterating his request to her to come back to him ; 
sometimes discussing conditions, if they should con- 
tinue to live independently of each other ; and she, in 
some of her answers, was beguiled into her old spirit 
of fun and mischief, signing herself " Hannah Moore," 
the name of a woman whose murder in an empty 
house, where she had been decoyed for the purpose 
by the man who made away with her, was one of the 
sensational incidents of the year. And he acknow- 
ledged the sinister suggestion in equally flippant 
spirit by signing himself " Greenacre " — the name of 
the woman's murderer — a bit of ill-timed funning of 
which both of them were afterwards very much 
ashamed. 

Whether she honestly meant to return to her 
husband to be his wife again without reservation, 
as he desired, it is difficult to say. A letter written 
somewhat later to Mrs. Shelley seems to show that 
she was not quite frank in her promises to him. 

" My hope was to come peaceably to an arrange- 
ment ; I will not say to outwit him, but to secure the 
boys. There is no length of desperation or of mean- 
ness that one may not be driven to in my situation." 

But in the meantime her sister-in-law and former 
guest, Miss Augusta Norton, had come to stay with 
her brother in Wilton Place. 

I continue the account in Mrs. Norton's own 
words : 

" A dispute followed as to what I had or had not 
said to this lady. Mr. Norton complained that I had 
stated to her I did not intend ' honestly ' to return to 
him, but to return for the sake of my children and my 
reputation, and that I had said * I never would live 
with him again.' " 



1837] CHILDREN SENT TO SCOTLAND 103 

The result was an instant revulsion to all his former 
violence and suspicion. When she next came to take 
her children to drive, he himself barred her entrance 
to them, and pushed her out of the house. She was 
again denied all access to them ; they were again sent 
back to Scotland. For four years their mother not 
only never saw them, but seldom even knew where 
they were. Once when she wrote to ask after them 
in illness, her letter to the nurse, which contained no 
syllable of offence, or beyond the subject of her 
inquiry, was turned inside out and franked back to 
her. To quote her own words : 

" The days and nights of anguish that grew into the 
struggle of years — it is even now a pain to look back 
upon : even now the hot agony of resentment and grief 
rises in my mind when I think of the needless tyranny 
I endured in this respect." 

But from such mischievous tyranny on the part of 
her husband there was no appeal, because there was 
no law ; there was hardly any public opinion to inter- 
fere with a father's absolute right over his children 
to the exclusion of their mother, if he chose so to 
assert it. 

That, in the end, after four years of unremitted 
struggle on her part, she did regain some limited 
intercourse with her three little boys while they were 
still children, was because she, single-handed, was 
able to effect a change in a law so that it would never 
again be possible for a man like George Norton to 
vent his spite in this particular way on the woman 
who was unfortunate enough to be his wife and to 
have incurred his resentment. 



CHAPTER IX 

EFFORTS TO MAKE HER OWN LIVING — A VOICE FROM 
THE FACTORIES 

After the trial, being utterly without resources of her 
own — for she had refused her husband's offer of £soo 
a year without the possession of her children — Mrs. 
Norton at first took refuge with Mrs. Sheridan at her 
old home in Hampton Court. No mother could have 
been more devoted to all her children, more filled with 
sorrow and sympathy for this one daughter, who 
would seem to have needed her most. And yet it is 
hardly likely that two such essentially different natures 
could have helped each other to bear what was to 
each, in her way, the greatest humiliation and sorrow 
of her life. 

For Mrs. Sheridan was already tried and trained by 
sufferings, which she had borne with a grave fortitude 
and prudence which must have come at last to be the 
very habit of her mind. It is impossible she could 
have always understood or approved a passionate, 
untamed creature like her daughter, who cried and 
sobbed when she was hurt, who poured herselt out 
in intimate, strong expression when she was deeply 
moved, who failed at all the points where the mother 
had been most strong, who would not keep still and 
let others act for her, and often compromised her 
own cause by reckless appeals or concessions, or wild 
attempts to get back or to see her children, just at the 

104 



1836] LETTER FROM LORD MELBOURNE 105 

moment when those members of her family to whom 
the arrangement of her affairs had been entrusted 
had hoped to wring more favourable terms from her 
husband in another way. 

And she herself was too sensitive to the moods and 
judgments of those about her not to wince even 
under tacit disapproval, however little the likelihood 
of such disapproval withheld her from what she 
thought best to do. Lord Melbourne's letters to her 
after the trial show something of the anxiety all her 
friends must have felt at this time lest she should 
compromise herself with some course of conduct 
contrary to what they thought her best interests. 
The first of these letters is in answer to one from her, 
to whom he had written in reproach for her complete 
silence after the trial. He had been afraid that her 
bitterness against fate had taken the form of anger 
with him as the chief cause ol her misfortune. But 
she was not capable of such petty resentments. She 
explained quite simply the cause of her seeming 
neglect of her old friend, her hopeless wretchedness 
at the fate of her little children. And then came his 
reply : 

" Well, come what may, I will never again, from 
silence or any other symptom, think that you can 
mean anything unkind or averse to me. I have 
already told you that most of the bitterness which 
I have felt during this affair was on your account. I 
don't think your application to Norton was judicious. 
From the beginning, your anxiety to prevent publicity 
has induced you to apply to him too much. Every 
communication elates him and encourages him to 
persevere in his brutality. You ought to know him 
better than I do, and must do so. But you seem to 
me to be hardly aware what a gnome he is, how 
perfectly earthly and bestial. He is possessed ol a 
devil, and that, the meanest and basest fiend that 
disgraces the infernal regions. In my opinion, he has 
made this whole matter subservient to his pecuniary 
interest. He has got money by it, from Blank, or 

14 



io6 EFFORTS TO MAKE HER OWN LIVING [chap, ix 

some one else. I should feel certain of this if it were 
not for his folly, which is so excessive as to render 
him incapable even of forwarding his own designs. 

" South Street, July 19, 1836. 
" There is no knowing what that man may do, now 
he is left to the guidance of his own feelings and to 
the advice of those about him. You knew the state 
of your own domestic affairs better than I did. 1 only 
knew what you told me ; but it appears to me that by 
living with him you had grown less alive to his real 
character by being accustomed to it, and also that you 
were so used to manage him and to prevent his follies 
that you relied too much on always being able to do it. 
Recollect when you were with him how stupidly and 
brutally he continually behaved : particularly, for 
instance, to Helen. His conduct there always struck 
me as showing a violence which was likely afterwards 
to break out. Now that he has nobody to advise or 
control or soothe him, what follies or what abominable 
conduct he may pursue it is impossible to conjecture. 
I pity you about the children. It is most melancholy 
not to know where they are or with whom." 

The next letter is a comment on one of the many 
propositions submitted by her husband's lawyers, in 
his effort to make her consent to some sort of a settle- 
ment in which the children were not included : 

" South Street, July 24. 

" I send you back the copies. I agree very much in 
all you say in your letter. The amount of allowance 
makes a great difference. If you could get ^^300 or 
^400 (I think you ought to have the latter sum) the 
arrangement might do tolerably well. But they are 
very advantageous terms for him, and should not be 
agreed to except for something approaching to an 
equivalent. I think he should secure your income 
beyond his own life upon any property which he may 
have. I have never mentioned money to you, and I 
hardly like to do it now ; your feelings have been so 
galled that they have naturally become very sore and 
sensitive, and 1 knew how you might take it. I have 
had at times a great mind to send you some, but I 



1836] LETTER FROM LORD MELBOURNE 107 

feared to do so. As I trust we are now upon terms 
of confidential and affectionate friendship, I venture to 
say that you have nothing to do but express a wish, 
and it shall be instantly complied with. I miss you. 
I miss your society and conversation every day at the 
hours at which I was accustomed to enjoy them ; and 
when you say that your place can be easily supplied, 
you indulge in a little vanity and self-conceit. You 
know well enough that there is nobody who can fill 
your place. ... I saw Brinsley and his wife the other 
night at Lord Hertford's. I thought him rather cold. 
None of them seem really glad to see me, except 
Charlie. But there is no reason they should be. If 
they went upon my principle, or rather my practice, 
of dislil<;ing those who cause me trouble, uneasiness, 
vexation, without considering why they do it, they 
certainly would not rejoice in my presence. 

" You are quite right, and it shows your good sense, 
to bear in mind that it may be of permanent dis- 
advantage to your children to be separated and 
estranged from their father's family, upon whom they 
must principally depend. I expect some day or 
another you will have them all thrown upon you. 
Adieu. 

" Yours, 

" Melbourne." 

It is not likely that Mrs. Norton accepted the offer 
of money made in this letter, though it is no less likely 
that she was in need of it. For even the ;^5o a year 
she inherited from her father remained in the hands 
of her husband, besides all her clothing, jewels, 
wedding-presents, etc., which she had left behind her, 
and which her husband had already threatened to sell 
for the money they would bring him. Brinsley had, 
indeed, made an offer to pay all his sister's personal 
debts, on condition that this property was returned to 
her ; but this offer was refused. She was not, of 
course, in any danger of actual want. She was one 
of a large and affectionate family, who would always 
have protected and supported her in return for a 
moderate consideration for their wishes. She had a 



io8 EFFORTS TO MAKE HER OWN LIVING [chap, ix 

home with her mother. Some sort of existence was 
always secure for her in the tranquil privacy of the 
old place where she had grown up — a peaceful enough 
shelter from the storm of blame and shame which was 
beating against her name everywhere else. 

She was still at Hampton Court in October 1836, 
and something of the chastened resignation which 
would be engendered by the atmosphere of the place 
seems to breathe through the following letter : 

" Hampton Court, October 4. 

" Very cold and very proud would the heart be, 
dearest Blank, which could take amiss your gentle 
observations, even were they less stamped with the 
truth of religion than those made in your last letter. 
Do not think that I have not already felt their truth 
from my innermost soul ; and if I have not expressed 
my convictions, it is partly that mine have been long 
letters of sorrowful complaint and explanation, and 
partly that the habits of a worldly life make me re- 
luctant to affirm as my sentiments that which must 
appear a strong contrast to my actions. Even when 
living flattered in my own set (that narrow circle of 
which, I think, Madame de Stael says that they stand 
around us and hide the rest of the world) I had many 
things to remind me how very little all the admiration 
or court which can be paid can make up for unhappi- 
ness at home. Many and many a night have I gone 
out to prove that I could go always to such and such 
places, and laughed restlessly after I got there, to 
prove mortification and sorrow could not reach me, 
when I could have laid my head on my hands and 
heard no more of what was going on than one hears 
in the vague murmurs of a waterfall. Many nights, 
especially in the last year since my great break with 
my husband, I give you my word that I have been 
unable to collect myself to answer to the purpose 
those who addressed me ; and I have felt so irritable at 
the consciousness that I could not, and so afraid of the 
sneering smile which I thought I perceived now and 
then on the faces of my acquaintances, that I have 
gone away almost immediately after arriving, unfit and 
unable to go through my evening's pleasure. 



1836] LETTER FROM HAMPTON COURT 109 

" It is impossible to have felt all this and not also 
have felt occasionally a remorse for wasted time ; and 
it is against my better thoughts and not my worse that 
I have had to struggle. I have felt and said to myself: 
' Surely this is an irrational, un-Christian, miserable 
way of passing one's life ! ' And then again rose Vanity 
and whispered : ' If you do not go here and there, it 
will only be supposed you were not asked.' And then 
the false aims and multitude of small ends to be com- 
passed ! Oh, depend on it, there is no treadmill like 
the life of a woman of the world, and you see it in the 
expression of the face. It is not late hours that bring 
that jaded, anxious look ; on the contrary, I believe you 
might sit up till morning singing till the lark inter- 
rupted you and be none the worse. It is the perpetual 
struggle to be and to do, and the internal and continual 
dissatisfaction with all one is and does, that eats away 
the freshness of one's life. 

" I do not know if you saw the Keepsake for this 
year, and you will, perhaps, think it very ridiculous of 
me to refer to my own poetry ; but I never wrote any- 
thing more from my heart than the description written 
more than a year ago on the print of ' Fashion's Idol ' 
in that book : 

" Nor found in all that rabble rout, 
Whose selfish pleasures only cloy, 
One heart that cheered us on in doubt, 
Or in our triumph gave us joy. 

" Well, it is over now, and I may well say that I feel 
the truth of your observations on adversity being good 
for us, when I tell you that I feel more thankful to 
God, more conscious how many, many blessings have 
fallen to my share at this time of sorrow — of the only 
real sorrow (but one) of my life — than I ever did in 
the days of my murmuring prosperity. 

** I am sure you will be glad to hear that I had news 
of my children two days since through my widowed 
sister-in-law,^ to whom Mr. Norton's youngest sister 
wrote a long and satisfactory account of them (I hope 
and think with the intention that it should be com- 

' This was Mrs. Charles Norton, widowed in 1835, who was Miss 
Colin Campbell, afterwards the Hon. Mrs. Edmund Phipps. 



no EFFORTS TO MAKE HER OWN LIVING [chap, ix 

municated to me), I have written to this sister. The 
hope of her answering is something to look forward 



to 



The whole poem from which she quoted is too long 
to introduce here. Its character is evident enough 
from the title and the extract she herself has furnished 
us. But however in poetry she might despise and 
call by hard names of vanity and folly the instincts 
that drew her back to her own kind, these were too 
much a part of her to be long denied. She might for 
a moment scale philosophic heights from which the 
sight of averted faces and slights of former friends 
were matters of indifference to her. But she would 
have been less herself if she had ever been able to 
stay there. 

Even in seasons of deepest depression and despair 
she was an essentially social person, who obtained her 
reactions by mingling with her kind. It was a part of 
her very self, her wit, her charm, her measure of life, 
which made the faces of her fellow-creatures so neces- 
sary to her. And never for a moment did she let go 
the favour of the world, which had been so seriously 
jeopardised by her husband's attack upon her 
reputation. 

We catch a glimpse of her — dressed in pink, with 
a black lace veil, her hair smooth, with a knot behind, 
and a string of small pearls across her forehead — at a 
little dinner in the chambers of the sharp-tongued 
Quarterly Reviewer, Abraham Hayward, in the Temple, 
where Lord Lyndhurst made them all laugh with his 
story of a certain old lady who kept her books in 
detached book-cases, the male authors in one and the 
female in another, because she did not wish to add 
to her library. And this in May 1836, when all the 
world was ringing with George Norton's intention to 
destroy his wife's honour by his suit against Lord 
Melbourne. 

When her host of that night saw her again, at the 



1836] HOUSE IN GREEN STREET iii 

end of the same year, however, he was forced to 
exclaim how thin and pale she had grown in the 
interval ; but she had not lost her power to attract 
and amuse, or her need to exercise it. 

The life at Hampton Court, with its intolerable 
memories and its sad restraints, had already become 
impossible for her, and she had broken away to make 
her home with her half-uncle, Mr. Charles Sheridan, at 
16, Green Street, afterwards in Bolton Street, May- 
fair. It is about this gentleman that Rogers used to 
tell the funny little story to his own disadvantage. 
They were playing forfeits, and Miss Sheridan — it 
was before her marriage — was condemned to kiss her 
uncle Charles. " Of course I did it willingly," she 
says. "And if it had been me?" hinted Rogers. 
"Oh, then I should have done it cheerfully!" 

There had been a very close and warm relation 
between this uncle and his widowed sister-in-law 
and her little children, ever since her husband's death 
brought Mrs. Sheridan back to England to make her 
home in Hampton Court. And of all these nieces 
and nephews, Caroline was perhaps his favourite. 
But though possessed of ample means for his own 
necessities, he was not a rich man, nor would she 
have been satisfied to live in entire dependence on 
him under any circumstances. The house they took 
together in Green Street was hers as well as his, and 
she was already hard at work to find the means to 
pay for it. 

When she left her husband she was engaged on a 
long poem, the manuscript of which was among the 
few papers she managed to regain possession of with 
the help of her brother Charles, whom she sent to 
get them from a little desk in her own drawing-room 
a few days after her flight. This poem she had 
finished and revised in the interval of her anguish 
during that miserable summer, and it had already 
found a publisher by October i. 

There is a certain noble appropriateness to the 



112 EFFORTS TO MAKE HER OWN LIVING [chap, ix 

finer side of her nature, that the work she was able 
to finish at such a time was the first of those appeals 
to the public to better the conditions of the wretched 
little creatures employed in factories, of which Mrs. 
Browning's " Cry of the Children," written seven 
years later, is the most beautiful example. 

John Murray, ot Albemarle Street, accepted the 
poem (a long, rather dreary affair in the Byronic 
stanza), less perhaps from its merits — it is the least 
interesting, the least poetic piece ot work she ever 
achieved — than from its appositeness to the spirit 
of the times; for the year 1836 was a time of great 
mass meetings, vigorous investigation of the con- 
dition of child-labour in the factories, largely the 
result of a Bill introduced into Parliament in 1833 
and warmly supported by Lord Ashley, or, as he 
is better known, the Earl of Shaftesbury, just entered 
upon that life-work of philanthropy which gives him 
such a claim to the gratitude of his countrymen. Lady 
Ashley was before her marriage Lady Emily Cowper, 
a contemporary and rival beauty of Georgiana, youngest 
of the three Sheridans. Her mother, afterwards Lady 
Palmerston, was Lord Melbourne's only sister. A 
younger sister ol Lady Ashley, Lady Fanny Cowper, 
afterwards married to Lord Jocelyn, was also a noted 
beauty in her day. 

Mrs. Norton's answer to Murray's acceptance of her 
poem is as follows : 

"Hampton Court Palace, 
''October 7, 1836. 

" I thank you for the promptitude with which you 
have replied to me, nor do I wish to express my 
disappointment at the terms on which you propose 
to print my little poem, having long since found out 
how very common the degree of literary talent is, of 
which I used to be so vain, and therefore no longer 
looking on either verse or prose as a heap of uncoined 
gold. I feel besides assured that after my confession 
of the disagreeable position I am in, you would act as 
liberally to me as circumstances would admit ; I do not 



1836] LETTER TO MURRAY 113 

therefore fear anything on that score. . . . There is, 
I believe, no question but that I might publish my 
brief effort perhaps in one sense more advantageously 
among the set of publishers who do not even ask to see 
a book, but pay you for it because it is yours ; but it is 
a wish, a vanity of mine, to be published by you. You 
know it is for the third time I have endeavoured to 
appear under your auspices. 1 have sometimes thought 
that friends of yours who are not friends of mine have 
thwarted me in this particular. 

** If you will publish my little poem immediately, I 
shall be too happy to send it to Albemarle Street 
again without disputing terms ; and as for my anony- 
mous character, if the poem has any success at all, I 
do not wish to preserve it very strictly. I only wish 
not to look my readers full in the face on my first 
introduction to them. My name has been (God 
knows) before the public long enough to make me 
hate the letters which compose the word. I have a 
slight shrinking from avowing even so light a treat- 
ment of a political subject ; and my treatment of it, 
such as it is, is against the opinion of some whom I 
respect and value amongst my friends. Are not Lord 
Ashley's, Mr. Murray's, and its own name enough ? 
If not, I am sure the addition of mine would not float 
it after the launch. . . . 

" You ought to encourage me, for you never gave 
any advice more faithfully followed than that which 
you offered when I was ambitious you should publish 
my ' Undying One ' : not to attempt strained and un- 
natural subjects. My ' Voice from the Factories ' is in 
the style you bid me adhere to, and I will still hope 
that you will take me under your charge." 

The person she hints at as unfriendly to her is 
Lockhart, afterwards one of her very good friends. 
The next letter to Mr. Murray shows clearly that it 
was he whom she meant. 

" 16, Green Street, October 19, 1836. 
" Dear Sir, 

"Owing to my absence from Hampton Court, I 
have only received the proofs this evening, and return 
them to you, hoping that you will kindly hasten the 

15 



114 EFFORTS TO MAKE HER OWN LIVING [chap, ix 

printing, in the form decided upon, as I wish to see it 
completed before I leave town for Dorsetshire. 

" I trust dining with Adam Blair (a nickname for 
Lockhart) did not make you ' catch a dislike to me/ 
as poor Douglas Kinnaird ^ once told me he did, after 
he had dined with some friends of his who were not 
friends of mine. He was very cross, and when I tried 
to coax him out of it he said : * The fact is, I caught 
cold last night where I dined, there was such a draft 
of air ; and I also caught a dislike to you, there was 
so much abuse and fault-finding.' 

*' Praying that you may be kept from such sickness, 
" Believe me, dear sir, 

** Yours truly, 

" C. E. Norton." 

She was very anxious that her poem should appear 
before the publication of a serious article on the same 
subject contemplated about the same time by the 
Quarterly. But the delays it suffered on its way 
through the press were often of her own making, 
and, indeed, sufficiently characteristic. 

She did not like the size of the page first submitted 
to her. " I think it too small. The first little poem I 
printed was in that type and of that size, and nothing 
could look worse than it did when bound up." 

Then she did not have a single book at that moment 
in her house (her new house with her uncle in Green 
Street), so she must wait another day till she could 
avail herself of Mr. Murray's suggestion, and choose 
a pattern from his shelves of the size she wished. 

Then there were mistakes in sending the proof. 
" The foolish Irish woman who has the care of my 
house never forwarded the papers you sent there. 
She has not yet been long enough with me to know 
of what consequence letters and papers are in my 
eyes, so she very innocently wrote me word that 
' Mr. Murray had sent some very heavy letters and 
parcels. What will I do with them?'" 

* A brother of Lord Kinnaird (her father's old friend), a banker in 
Westminster, who died 1830. 



1836-7] ILLNESS AND DEPRESSION 115 

The poem finally appeared late in November, under 
the not very attractive name, " A Voice from the 
Factories " ; and she received enough from the sales 
to give her a certain confidence in the future — at least, 
that part of the future which depended on her own 
powers to make her daily bread. But both present 
and future must often have seemed unspeakably dreary 
and hopeless during that first winter alone with her 
uncle, without her little children. It is during that 
winter of 1836-7 that we begin to hear about the 
ravages of that exceedingly modern plague, influenza ; 
and she was ill for a long time. There are some 
verses of hers, published three years later, which seem 
to apply especially to that period of painful inaction : 

" I was alone, but not asleep ; 
Too weary and too weak to weep ; 
My eyes had closed in sadness there, 
And they who watched o'er my despair 
Had placed that dim light in the room. 
And deepened the surrounding gloom 
By curtaining out the few sad rays 
Which made things present to my gaze : 
All, all because they vainly thought 
At last the night its rest had brought — 
Alas ! rest came no more to me, 
So heavy was my misery ! 

"And while I darkly rested there. 
The breath of a young child's floating hair. 
Perfumed, and warm, and glistening bright. 
Swept past me in the shrouding night ; 
And the footsteps of children, light and quick 
(While my heart beat loud, and my breath came thick), 
Went to and fro on the silent floor : 
And the lock was turned in the fastened door 
As a child may turn it, who tiptoe stands 
With his fair round arms and his dimpled hands, 
Putting out all their strength in vain 
Admittance by his own means to gain : 
Till his sweet, impatient voice is heard 
Like the chirp of a young imprisoned bird, 
Seeking an entrance still to win 
By fond petitions to those within. 



ii6 EFFORTS TO MAKE HER OWN LIVING [chap, ix 

"A child's soft, shadowy hair, bright smiles, 
His merry laugh and coaxing wiles, 
These are sweet things — most precious things — 
But in spite of my brain's wild wanderings, 
I knew that they dwelt in my fancy only, 
And that I was sad, and left, and lonely ; 
And the fear of a dreadful madness came 
And withered my soul like a parching flame ; 
And I felt the strong delirium growing, 
And the thread of my feeble senses going ; 
And I heard with a horror all untold, 
Which turned my hot blood icy cold. 
Those light steps draw more near my bed; 
And by visions I was visited 
Of the gentle eyes which I might not see, 
And the faces that were so far from me ! 

"And blest, oh, blest ! was the morning beam 
Which woke me up from my fever-dream ! " 

And yet it was that same winter that we hear of her 
return into general society from Lord Malmesbury. 

" Mrs. Norton made her debut a few nights ago, and 
was very well received. Her reception had been 
made a party question ; indeed, the whole business 
has been." 

We hear of her, too, riding in the Park or driving to 
Richmond with her uncle or her sisters, going out 
with them in the evening, and herself giving little 
dinners at her own house. Yet she never really 
resigned herself to her new situation. Long years 
afterwards, in reply to a taunt of her husband's that, 
in spite of her contemptuous abuse of him, she was 
always ready enough to renew friendly relations with 
him, she breaks out : 

" My husband is welcome to the triumph of knowing 
that, especially during the first four years of our 
separation, I often wavered and wept ; that pride and 
bitter anger have not always been uppermost; that 
there have been hundreds of dreary evenings and 
hopeless mornings, when even his home seemed to 



1837] LONELINESS 117 

me better than no home — even his protection better 
than no protection — and all the thorns that can cumber 
a woman's natural destiny, better than the unnatural 
position of a separated wife. He is welcome to the 
triumph of knowing that it is impossible to have felt 
more keenly than 1 did the confused degradation of 
that position. I was too unlike his picture of me to 
be otherwise than often miserable ; often willing to 
make a raft out of the wreck, and so drift back, even 
to a comfortless haven. There were moments, too, 
when I pitied him ; when I believed his story of loneli- 
ness and repentance." 

It was in this spirit she met him when he came back 
to her after Miss Vaughan's death, when she consented 
to see him and treat with him during the summer 
while he wrote the ** Greenacre Letters." I have 
already told how entirely the hopes excited by those 
letters were deceived and betrayed. She was very 
near despair when she wrote the following to John 
Murray, which I give to show the endless contrasts 
of that brilliant, many-sided nature, as well as for its 
characteristic wording and opinions. 

The Honourable Mrs. Norton to John Murray 

"November ^, 1837. 

" Dear Sir, 

" I have received ' Don Juan,' and the October 
Quarterly. In thanking you for the two volumes of 
Byron belonging to the present beautiful edition, I 
must tell you that I had never read ' Don Juan ' through 
before, which very few women of my age in England 
could say, and which I do not mind owning, since it 
adds greatly to the pleasure with which I perused the 
poem. I am afraid, in spite of the beauty, the wit, and 
the originality of the work, I think with Guiccioli — 
' Mi rincrese solo che Don Giovani non resti, al inferno.' 
It is a book which no woman will ever like ; whether 
for the reasons given by the author, or on other 
accounts, I will not dispute. To me the effect is like 
hearing some sweet and touching melody familiar 
to me as having been sung by a lost friend and 



ii8 EFFORTS TO MAKE HER OWN LIVING [chap, ix 

companion, suddenly struck up in quick time with all 
the words parodied. 

" I am in town for a short time, and occupied with 
lawyers and law — as usual. I used to boast of my 
partiality for the Bar as a profession, but I begin to 
think it would be pleasanter to follow a marching 
regiment than to see the seamy side of this intellectual 
trade. Who has sprung up as Mrs. Norton in Bentleys 
Miscellany ? It is pretty cool, of the lady taking the 
name and title of my husband's wife, and I do not 
much like the mistake, as I have been too ill to write 
for those to whom I was bound by the bond of hire. 

" Yours ever, 

" Caroline Norton." 



CHAPTER X 

THE ENGLISH LAW — ACCESSION OF QUEEN VICTORIA 

The lawyers and law matters mentioned at the end of 
the last chapter relate to a very worthy attempt of Sir 
John Bayley, George Norton's chief legal adviser, to 
make some kind of terms between husband and wife 
to which they would both consent. 

Sir John Bayley had heard of the case only from his 
client, and was thoroughly prejudiced against Mrs. 
Norton, whom he had already judged as a vain and 
frivolous woman, guilty, even if not actually convicted 
of the grossest infidelity against her husband, who 
wanted a large allowance, that she "might dash about 
to fashionable parties," and the possession of her 
children, that she might save her reputation with the 
world. In all earlier discussion of this subject of 
settlement, he had urged his client to stand firm 
against any more favourable conditions than those 
already proposed, especially those concerning the 
possession of the children. 

" For," as he remarks in a letter to George Norton's 
solicitor on this subject, " I feel confident that no court 
of equity would ever enforce her havingaccess to them 
as long as Mr. Norton is alive and forbids it; and my 
advice to Mr. Norton is to resist most strenuously 
every attempt of the kind." 

There is another letter from Sir John Bayley stating 

119 



I20 THE ENGLISH LAW [chap, x 

the conditions on which he enters upon his new 
duty : 

" Some time in the autumn of 1837, 1) ^t Mr. Norton's 
own earnest solicitation, took upon myself the arduous 
and thankless task of arbitrator, providing that Mrs. 
Norton would permit me to act in that capacity on her 
behalf. I did not expect that she would ever consent to 
do this, from the position I had held as counsellor her 
husband, and the impression she necessarily must have 
entertained that I was prejudiced against her. To her 
honour and credit, however, she at once acceded to 
Mr. Norton's side of the request. I received from both 
her and her husband written assurances that both would 
abide by my decision whatever it might be ; and on 
these terms I entered on my difficult task." 

He came, and at his first interview with her found 
occasion to change his preconceived opinion to one 
much more favourable. 

" My husband," said Mrs. Norton many years later, 
" is fond of paying me the melancholy compliment 
that to my personal charms, and not to the justice of 
my cause, I owed it that all concerned in these 
wretched affairs took my part against him as soon as 
they had an explanation with me. Now, it would 
certainly have been strictly probable that any man, 
especially a man of Sir John Bayley's nature — blunt, 
kindly, and vehement — would, on finding, instead of 
the painted wanton he expected to find, prepared to 
struggle for her rights and her interests, a miserable, 
sobbing, worn-out young woman, appealing to him 
for nothing but the mercy of getting back her children 
(those dear children, the loss of whose pattering steps 
and sweet, occasional voices made the silence of her 
new home intolerable as the anguish of death) ; I say 
it is conceivable that being but a man, and not the 
angel of justice, he might have leaned unduly and com- 
passionately to the person whose bitter grief and 
single simple stipulation came on him as a surprise ; 
and that so he might not have dealt as impartially as 
good faith with Mr. Norton required." 



1837] SIR JOHN BAYLEY 121 

She goes on, however, with characteristic vehemence, 
to prove that it was not so ; that Sir John Bayley's 
consideration for her was to be attributed not to pity, 
not to friendship, but to mere justice ; but perhaps a 
more satisfactory evidence in this respect is a letter 
from Sir John Bayley himself, which appeared some 
years later in the Times in answer to an accusation ot 
bad faith against him by his former client. 

" I found Mrs. Norton anxious only on one point, 
and nearly heart-broken about it ; namely, the restora- 
tion of her children. She treated her pecuniary affairs 
as a matter of perfect indifference, and left me to 
arrange them with Mr. Norton as I thought fit. I 
found her husband, on the contrary, anxious only 
about the pecuniary part of the arrangement, and so 
obviously making the love of the mother for her 
offspring a means of barter and bargain, that I wrote 
to him I could be no party to any arrangement which 
made money the price of Mrs. Norton's fair and 
honourable access to her children. I found his history 
of her expenses and extravagance to be untrue. I 
found, under Mr. Norton's own handwriting, con- 
fessions of the grossest personal violence towards his 
wife. 1 wrote to him to say that, in spite of these 
injuries, I found Mrs. Norton * reasonable,' ' tractable,' 
' very forbearing indeed, in her expressions towards 
him,' anxious to satisfy him * for the children's sake ' ; 
writing to me instead of abusing him, that she desired 
' heartily, vainly, and sorrowfully, to be at peace with 
her children's father.' I found that the taking away 
of these children had been the real cause of the 
quarrel, and that, not only Mr. Norton threw the 
blame of the subsequent trial on his advisors and 
declared that the trial had been brought on against 
his judgment, but that one of his angriest grounds ot 
complaint against his wife was that she had said that 
she never would return to him. I read with amazement 
the series of letters which Mr. Norton had previously 
addressed to his wife, and in which he signs himself 
' Greenacre.' I showed these letters to Lord Wynford.^ 

^ ATory peer, George Norton's former guardian. Present at the trial 
of Lord Melbourne, and suspected of having had a good deal to do with 
collecting the evidence on which the prosecution of that nobleman rested. 

16 



122 THE ENGLISH LAW [chap, x 

I said if Mrs. Norton had been my sister I would 
have made them public ; and I consider she showed 
forbearance and consideration in not making them 
public. Mr. Norton admitted to me his firm belief 
of his wife's innocence of the charge he had brought 
against her and Lord Melbourne ; and these letters 
of his expressly exculpated her from blame, and 
endearingly entreated her to return and live with 
him again. I then changed my opinion. I thought 
Mr. Norton had done his wife the most cruel injury 
a man could inflict, and that he was bound to make 
every sacrifice and reparation in his power. I saw 
no earthly reason why her children should be with- 
held from her, and required him to write immediately 
to Scotland, where the children then were, to have them 
sent to London forthwith. In my presence and at my 
direction he wrote a letter to that effect and sealed it. 
I posted it myself, and thought all was settled, as the 
sole stipulation made by Mrs. Norton was the return 
of her children ; but Mr. Norton was base enough to 
write a second letter, unknown to me, to forbid their 
coming ; and come they did not. As soon as I 
discovered this act of treachery and breach of faith, 
I threw up-my office as mediator. I remonstrated in 
severe terms with Mr. Norton, and my intercourse 
with him ceased. 

" I deem it, however, the simplest justice to Mrs. 
Norton to say that I found her frank and straight- 
forward throughout, acting strictly up to this sentence 
in her first letter to me, ' Heartily, and as God is my 
judge, I desire to make what peace is possible between 
me and my husband, in spite of the past.' She left her 
interests entirely in my hands ; threw no obstacle in 
my path, and never once swerved from the promise to 
abide by whatever terms I should lay down. With 
Mr. Norton (though he had appointed me to act) I 
found the exact reverse. He abused his wife and his 
wife's family ; he shuffled about the misstatements he 
could not deny ; he would be bound neither by his 
verbal promise nor his written pledge ; and after a 
correspondence, begun in November, which did not 
end till January, all effort at arrangement was 
given up. 

" The question of Mrs. Norton's allowance was not 



1837-8] MR. NORTON AND HIS WIFE'S DEBTS 123 

entered upon, as my interference terminated at this 
point." 

To complete this part of the story, Mr, Norton 
continued to withhold from his wife any allowance for 
support while she continued to live separated from 
him, until the summer of 1838, when certain creditors 
whom he would not, and she could not pay, decided to 
carry the matter into the common courts and sue 
George Norton for what his wife owed them ; for the 
same law which took away a woman's independent 
existence on her marriage gave her at least this 
advantage. Being legally non-existent, no one could 
sue her for any debt she might contract with trusting 
tradespeople ; nor had her creditors any legal means of 
recovering directly from her. Her husband was, how- 
ever, liable for her debts, if it could be proved that he 
had left her without adequate means of support, or 
that she had refused to live with him. 

George Norton, being himself a lawyer, was per- 
fectly aware of the weakness of his position before 
the law. It was for this reason he was so anxious to 
force his wife into acceptance of the sum he was 
willing to give her, which, by the way, he always 
made dependent on the condition that he should be no 
longer liable for her debts, whether contracted in the 
past or in time to come. The clause including the past 
was as important as the condition about the future ; 
for in those days accounts might run on without a 
settlement for a dozen years or more. In fact, prompt 
payment, even by rich people, was rather the exception 
than the rule, and tradespeople were accustomed to get 
what they could, when they could, and present a bill 
at the time when it was most likely to be acceptable, 
rather than at the time it was due. 

As long as there was no legal arrangement of 
separation between George Norton and his wife, he 
was always subject to this inconvenience from his 
wife's creditors, and always struggling to evade it, 



124 THE ENGLISH LAW [chap, x 

even to the extent of advertising her in the public 
papers, which he did three separate times : immediately 
after she left him, and again in the summer of 1837, 
when fresh disagreement had put a stop to the half- 
concluded reconciliation between them, and again in 
May 1838 : 

"Whereas on March 30, 1836, my wife, Caroline 
Elizabeth Sarah, left me, her family, and home, and 
hath from thenceforth continued to live separate and 
apart from me," etc. 

Hayward remarks in a letter to his sister. May 23, 
1838: 

'* You have seen, I suppose, Norton's advertisement 
that his wife is not to be trusted : a useless insult, 
as he would not be liable if he made her a proper 
allowance." 

A gratuitous insult, one would think, for he had 
been assured by his lawyers that such a notice was 
perfectly useless from a legal point of view. We can 
understand the complications in Mrs. Norton's position 
better when we learn that one of the bills she refused 
to pay was for jewellery, an account extending from 1 833 
to 1837, and for articles which were at that moment 
in her husband's possession. This and several smaller 
suits were settled out of court, but one suit did come 
up for a public hearing. 

It was a bill for ^^142, which had been running for 
about a year, from March 1837 to January 1838, at a 
livery stable where she had been in the habit of hiring 
cabs and horses before and after her separation from 
her husband. The particular expense which made the 
bill so large, however, was for a small phaeton, which 
she used when driving with her three little boys for 
the few weeks in the summer when she was per- 
mitted to see them during her partial reconciliation 
with her husband. 



1838] SUIT BEFORE LORD ABINGER 125 

The case was tried before Lord Abinger, a personal 
friend of Lord Wynford. Theoretically, of course, 
Mrs. Norton was not a party to the suit, and there- 
fore not involved in the evidence ; but as the validity 
of the creditor's claims depended on the relations - 
in which husband and wife stood while the debt was 
being contracted, a certain amount of very personal 
evidence was brought into court. 

Indeed, there seems to have been an effort on the 
part of some of Mrs. Norton's advisers to use this 
trial as an opportunity for clearing her name, which 
that earlier action against Lord Melbourne had by 
no means afforded. For this purpose Sir John 
Bayley, called as a witness by the creditor, made 
repeated efforts to get George Norton's own corre- 
spondence with his wife in 1837 brought into evidence, 
with its declarations of his (Mr. Norton's) entire belief 
of his wife's innocence. But the lawyer for the defence, 
Sir Fitzroy Kelly, was always successful in keeping it 
out, on one technicality after another. 

Lord Abinger also took occasion in his summing-up 
to reproach this same vehement gentleman, Sir John 
Bayley, for even trying to introduce information, which 
he could only have obtained as George Norton's legal 
adviser and the arbitrator in his affairs with his wife. 
Mrs. Norton was also indirectly criticised as having 
so far identified herself with the case against her 
husband as to have furnished the plaintiff with private 
letters and papers which went far to prove George 
Norton's liability for her debts. She certainly did 
furnish such papers, and it is difficult to see why 
she should be blamed for doing so, since it was the 
only way the law allowed her for getting her own 
difficulties decided. And the fact that she was so 
blamed added only another exasperation to a situa- 
tion already sufficiently painful. She angrily resolved 
to justify herself by publishing the whole account ot 
her case from the beginning, including the evidence 
suppressed by Lord Abinger, and was restrained from 



126 THE ENGLISH LAW [chap, x 

so doing only by the entreaty of Lord Melbourne, for 
reasons best given in her own words : 

" It so happened that this petty cause — pleaded by 
Sir Fitzroy Kelly and decided by Lord Abinger, in 
which nothing more important than a woman's fame 
and a woman's interests were at stake — was tried at 
the exact moment (June 1838) when, in the first year 
of a young queen's reign, the Whig Government was 
overwhelmed with business even more troublesome 
than that which the cares of office usually involve. 
What was my poor destiny in a session in which a 
new coinage and a coronation, the revolts in Canada, 
the attempt to repeal the Corn Laws, the conduct of 
O'Connell, the King of Hanover's claim for his English 
income, the Irish Church Bill, the first general arrange- 
ments of mails by railroad, the visit of Marshal Soult, 
the creation of a new batch of Peers, the passing of the 
Irish Poor Law, and a hundred other subjects of varying 
importance, employed Lord Melbourne's attention? 
What could my sobbing, moaning, and complaining 
be but a bore to this man who was not my lover ? 
What could my passionate printed justification be 
but a plague and embarrassment to him, already 
justified and on the pinnacle of fortune? Let no 
one say Lord Melbourne's family should not hold 
me in kind remembrance : for then, young, childless, 
defamed, sorrowful, and rash, there never was the day 
that I rebelled against his advice or gave him annoyance 
that I could possibly avoid. I did not even persist : 
* This can only be a temporary embarrassment by 
revival of painful gossip to you ; it is my life, my 
future, the strongest temptation of my heart to justify 
myself.' 

" I listened then, as at other times, to the ever-ready 
argument that I would be justified without these 
means ; that they would be beyond measure vexatious 
and embarrassing to him ; that I might ' rest assured ' 
that no patience I showed would be forgotten, either 
by him or those above him. I gave up what I had 
prepared." 

She responded, as she always did, as far as was in 
the power of that impulsive, imprudent nature, to an 



1838] LORD MELBOURNE AND THE QUEEN 127 

appeal to generosity or affection, though this par- 
ticular appeal was at a time when the old friendship 
it acknowledged had come to be a very barren thing. 
For the death of William IV. and the accession of a 
young, inexperienced woman to the throne of Great 
Britain had wonderfully changed the position of the 
once unpopular Prime Minister, and Lord Melbourne's 
absorption in his new duties was the general talk of 
the hour. 

It was not only a natural zeal to acquit himself well 
in a difficult and delicate situation, but a very real and 
close friendship which had sprung up between the 
girl of seventeen and the gallant old statesman of 
fifty-eight. To quote Charles Greville on the subject : 

" I have no doubt he is passionately fond of her [the 
Queen], as he might be of his daughter, if he had one, 
and the more because he is a man with a capacity for 
loving without having anything in the world to love." 

Nor was this affection in any degree one-sided. 
The Queen herself admired and loved and trusted 
the man with whom she was brought into such 
continual intercourse. 

" She really has nothing to do with anybody but 
Melbourne," Greville goes on ; " and with him she 
passes more hours than any two people in any relation 
of life perhaps ever do pass together. At eleven or 
twelve every morning he comes to her and stays an hour. 
At two she rides, Melbourne always at her left hand, and 
the equerry-in-waiting on her right. She rides for 
two hours along the road, for the greater time at 
full gallop. Dinner at 7.30, but she seldom appears 
till eight. Let who will be there, Melbourne always sits 
next her, and evidently by arrangement, because he 
always takes in the lady-in-waiting, who must sit next 
but one to the Queen. In the drawing-room the Queen 
sits at a large round table, her guests around it, and 
Melbourne always in a chair at her left, remaining 
there without moving while two mortal hours are 



128 ACCESSION OF QUEEN VICTORIA [chap, x 

consumed in such conversation as can be tound, 
which appears, and really is, very uphill work. 

"But interesting as his position is, and flattered, 
gratified, and touched as he must be by the confiding 
devotion with which she places herself in his hands, 
it is still marvellous that he should be able to over- 
come the force of habit so completely as to endure the 
life he leads. Month after month he remains at the 
Castle, submitting to the daily routine. Of all men 
he appeared to be the least likely to be broken into 
the trammels of a court, and never was there such a 
revolution seen in anybody's occupations and habits. 
Instead of indolently sprawling in all the attitudes of 
luxurious ease, he is always sitting bolt upright ; his 
free-and-easy language, interlarded with damns, is 
carefully guarded and regulated with the strictest 
propriety, and he has exchanged the good talk of 
Holland House for the trivial, laboured, and wearisome 
inanities of the Royal circle." 

All those closely connected with Lord Melbourne, 
and accustomed to count on his society, must have 
lost by this readjustment of all his habits around a 
new centre ; but the friend whose old relations with 
him most resembled the new may be supposed to have 
lost the most. Indeed, the surprise which Greville 
shows at seeing his old acquaintance so changed and 
tamed to the dull conventions of Windsor must have 
been stronger still in Mrs. Norton, as in any other 
woman before or after her, when she sees the man 
she was so proud to have held by the charms of her 
conversation so easily satisfied with so much less. 

It must also have been a strange experience for her 
to find the same quality of friendship which had met 
with such contemptuous disbelief or suspicion in her 
own case, so justly and fairly regarded when seen in 
a royal setting ; and the man whose name had been 
coupled so lately with hers, in a very pillory of shame, 
admitted to be the closest and most honoured adviser 
of a pure young girl, while she herself was not received 
at Court again, by Lord Melbourne's own advice, as 



1838] SUBMISSION 129 

long as the Queen remained unmarried. There were 
times when the cruel contrasts in it all made her break 
out into a sort of cry : 

" Why am I hunted and haunted through life with a 
scandal involving two persons, but seemingly admitting 
of but one acquittal ? " 

On the whole, however, she submitted to the obvious 
necessity of a woman to bear, in matters like this, 
the greater share of blame. She submitted to Lord 
Melbourne's request that she would make no public 
attempt to clear her name of the scandals which still 
besmirched it. On one point alone she refused to 
remain passive. She knew it was the law of England 
which had taken her children from her. Very well 
then ; that law must be changed, or if that was 
beyond her power, at least known through the length 
and breadth of the land in its whole iniquity. 



17 



CHAPTER XI 

THE INFANT CUSTODY BILL 

The first resource of a woman like Caroline Norton, 
suffering under what she felt to be an intolerable 
wrong arising from an anomaly of conditions which 
cried out for investigation and reform, was her pen. 
And, indeed, it was to her pen that she instantly 
turned, " looking to it " (I quote her own words) 
" to extricate me, as the soldier trusts to his sword to 
cut his way through." 

Even in the autumn of 1836, immediately after her 
separation from her husband, while she was bargaining 
with Murray for the sale of her poem, "A Voice from 
the Factories," she was already at work on a prose 
pamphlet on the subject always closest to her heart, 
" The Natural Claim of a Mother to the Custody of 
her Children as affected by the Common Law Right 
of the Father." She was not so utterly unequipped 
as most women for work of this semi-legal character, 
for she had often amused herself in the past among 
her husband's law-books, and drawn from them 
enough at least to show a woman as clever as she 
was the way to turn the slight taste she always 
had for such subjects into a really serious study and 
support. 

The real difficulty lay in getting any one to publish 
what she might produce in this new departure. All 
her usual outlets, the pages of annuals and fashionable 

130 



1836] LETTERS TO MURRAY 131 

journals, were of course completely useless to her for 
such a purpose as she contemplated, and it was equally 
impossible to get any publisher to handle what might 
so easily in her hands become distinctly compromising 
matter. 

She first applied to Murray, who consented at least 
to read and criticise her manuscript, though without 
much encouragement otherwise. To Murray she 
accordingly sent it with the following letter: 

" Frampton Court, December. 

" Dear Sir, 

" I very hastily enclose my ' Observations, etc.,' 
to you. The cases are wanting in the middle, because 
I have been so ill. I have not yet finished copying 
them familiarly from the legal reports ; but you have 
all the work which needs to show you the style and 
intention. My brother Charles forwarded me your 
answer, which is the reason I send it to you thus 
imperfect, as it saves me time in case you still think it 
a publication to decline undertaking for me. I shall 
then print it at my own expense at Ridgway's, or try 
my old friends Saunders & Otley, as I am obstinate 
in determining it shall appear. I will thankfully 
receive any suggestions for alterations or omissions 
you think ought to be made. Pray show it to no 
one. I have told Mr. Hayward I will send it to 
him in proof; I have also, on his advice, omitted 
any personal attack on Lord Wynford, which I think 
I might justly and safely have done. However, I 
have enemies enough and bitter enough already, so 
it is as well. 

" Will you return it soon with your opinion ? Will 
you tell me the probable expense of printing it, if I 
do that, and any other thing which your experience 
suggests on the subject ? " 

Mr. Murray's opinion was so full of caution and 
criticism that she hastily resolved, rather than submit 
to the pruning that he suggested, to have the tract 
printed and circulated privately at her own ex- 
pense. 



132 THE INFANT CUSTODY BILL [chap, xi 

She wrote to him accordingly as follows : 

" Maiden Bradley, Mere, Wilts " 

[Lord Seymour's place in Wiltshire], 

" December 24. 

" Dear Sir, 

" I have this moment received your letter, for 
which and for the hints contained in it many thanks. 
I wrote to my brother to call and know your decision ; 
I have written to him again to-day. What I will do is 
this: I will make Ridgway print 100 copies for 
private (!) circulation ; and then I will take a little 
time and a good deal of counsel as to what shall be 
struck out in publishing on the subject. Mr. Hayward 
said he would ' support it ' in his January magazine ;^ 
but he has not yet seen it, I will set it up in slips and 
send it so to him. I can then send the printed copies 
to friends and members of Parliament ; 1 do not think 
I am an obstinate, and certainly not a touchy, author, 
as regards mere authorship — that is, I am not mortified 
or disturbed at passages being objected to and cut out, 
but I shall be beyond measure vexed and disappointed 
if the fear of prosecution prevents its being published. 
Can no one be made responsible for it instead of the 
publisher — one of my brothers, for instance ? Am I 
not responsible ? Tell me this, or inform Charles if 
you find time to see him ; and let the MS. come to me 
through Downing Street, with ' Immediate ' upon it. 
I will not trouble you farther on the subject at present. 
I consider the publication in some way, modified or 
not, as a necessity, and I should not care if my 
pamphlet were forgot the next day, if some one would 
follow better able to treat it, and who would treat it 
with the same views." 

A more intimate history of this pamphlet, and of 

the purpose for which she was especially preparing it, 

is found in the following correspondence with Mrs. 

Shelley, already published by Fitzgerald in his 

"Lives of the Sheridans": 

" Maiden Bradley. 

" I have suffered, and do suffer so much mentally 
and bodily, that I regret I ever allowed the children 

' The Quarterly Review of Jurisprudence, edited for many years by 
Abraham Hayward. 



1837] LETTERS TO MRS. SHELLEY 133 

to go out of my reach : though taking them would 
have entailed the necessity of leaving all my own 
people and living abroad. I am about to publish 
* Observations on the Natural Claim of a Mother to 
the Custody of her Young Children,' in which, among 
other cases, I have given my own. I think there is 
too much fear of publicity about women ; it is reckoned 
such a crime to be accused, and such a disgrace, that 
they wish nothing better than to hide themselves and 
say no more about it. I think it is high time that law 
was known, at least among the weaker sex, which 
gives no right to one's own flesh and blood ; and I 
shall follow that with 'A Comparison between the 
English and Scotch Law of Divorce,' as affecting the 
possibility of defence on the part of woman. 

" This occupies my restlessness, which is very great, 
and of that painful, hopeless sort, with no aim or 
object." 

" MAmEN Bradley, January 5. 

" Dear Mrs. Shelley, 

" I have been a very wretch for rheumatism in 
the head and weakness in the eyes, or would sooner 
have answered your kind and welcome letter. 

" I finished my ' Observations on the Natural Claim 
of the Mother 'last week, and it is now printing at 
Ridgway's. There is so much dispute and worry 
about prosecutable passages, that I have ordered them 
to print now 500 copies as for private (!) circulation ; 
and when I am in town, which will be at the end of 
this month, I can see to the publication of it. I also 
intend, if possible (and what is there not possible in 
this world ?), to have a discussion of the alteration of 
that law in Parliament this session, I am very im- 
patient to send you the pamphlet. It was a great 
triumph to me to see how alike what I had written 
and part of your letter was (what very awkward 
prose !). I improved the passage materially by your 
observation on what was permitted to women, or 
rather excused in women, when they receive any rude- 
ness ; but as you are to have the trouble of reading it 
in print, I will not say more about it now. 

" Perhaps you will not think I have gone far enough ; 
I thought it best to have the appearance of calmness 
and fairness, and I struck out many passages which 



134 THE INFANT CUSTODY BILL [chap, xi 

my sister, Georgiana Seymour, called my 'callow- 
nestling bits.' I insisted on the rule, already existent 
for illegitimate children, that children under the age of 
seven should belong, at all events, to the mother ; and 
after that, access dependent, not on the father, but on 
the Court of Chancery. God knows that if the Court 
judged the conduct of women by the same laws as 
they do that of men, and pronounced as indulgent 
opinions, we should be happily protected. Conceive, 
in one of the cases I had from the Law Reports, the 
mother being obliged to leave her child in the hands 
of the husband's mistress, and the Court saying it had 
no power to interfere. Was there ever such a per- 
version of natural rights ? And yet those very courts 
assume they have a power in case of religious or 
political opinion on the father's part. The fact is, in 
this commercial country, as it is called, the rights of 
property are the only rights really and efficiently pro- 
tected ; and the consideration of property the onlj'- one 
which weighs with the decision made in a court of 
justice. I do not mean that they decide unjustly in 
favour of the rich, but where there is no property law 
fails — as if it was for that, and not for men, that laws 
were made. The great obstacle, in all the cases I have 
looked through, to the woman obtaining her child, or 
even obtaining that it should be in the hands of a third 
party as a proper guardian, has been the want of pro- 
perty to justify the interference of the law. 

** I also was much struck and affected by the simple 
story conveyed in all Mrs. Hemans's ^ letters. I have 
a letter somewhere, containing an account of the boy 
Charles, which she wrote me when I was editress of 
that magazine, written in a true mother's spirit ; and, 
indeed, the mother must be a fond one who will so 
trust to the interest of an utter stranger as to describe 
and expatiate upon the qualities of some little un- 
known. I never saw her ; but I think of all people she 
would least have disappointed those who had known 
her first by her writings ; there was something German 
in her very soul, simple, noble, and full of a kindly and 
soaring spirit. As for Mr. Chorley's portion of the 
work, he perhaps felt that he might be more abused 

' A Memoir of Mrs. Hemans had been published in 1836 by 
Chorley. 



1837] MRS. HEMANS 135 

for showing any vanity of authorship in a task of that 
sort, than for being meagre in his additions. 

" There is also a difficulty in being compelled to 
omit the greater part of her biography, as it is 
necessarily entwined with family matters. [After 
dwelling on certain rumours and other matters of a 
private kind, she goes on.] The very vague manner 
in which he mentions the husband going to Italy for 
his health, and her remaining in England because of 
her literary avocations, made me almost smile. Fancy 
any woman — and more especially such a woman — 
staying to print poetry, while her husband went to die 
in Italy. The thing is absurd. One would not do it 
even by a husband one did not love. 

** Did you observe the mem. for a poem ? The 
sorceress who gave up, one by one, all her gifts to 
secure the love of a mortal, and was abandoned by 
him at last? I mean to seize it as my inheritance: 
though after that most lovely and undervalued creation, 
Guendolen in 'The Bridal of Triermain,' anything of that 
sort must seem a copy. Does it not provoke you 
sometimes to think how in vain the gift of genius is 
for a woman ; how, so far from binding her more closely 
to the admiration and love of her fellow-creatures, it 
does in effect create that ' gulf across which no one 
passes,' and all to be forgotten ! Witness its being im- 
possible to find out when or how Aspasia died, who I 
believe to have been Pericles's superior in all things 
except the power to steer the ship of which you speak. 

" I have been interrupted by letters which, by re- 
calling to me all that is real and grating in my position, 
and obliging me to answer lawyers, etc., cut short that 
which is pleasant — writing to you. I will therefore only 
add a wish to know how Percy acquitted himself at 
his Cambridge dinner; do not mind his shyness. I 
believe Lord Melbourne once said of it that ' a certain 
sort of shyness is not only a concomitant, but a proof 
of real genius.' That ' certain sort of shyness ' I take 
to be sauvagerie. 

[Then follows the passage already cited, p. 12.] 

" I think there is a lingering touch of this shyness 
in you, in spite of the finest, frankest, and prettiest 
manners that ever took my fancy, and I have felt it in 
myself very often. 



136 THE INFANT CUSTODY BILL [chap, xi 

" With most earnest wishes that you may be the 
mother of a celebrated man, whose fame shall not 
depend on the few eager struggling years of a restless 
youth, like him too early taken away, and with kind 
but hurried good wishes for your health and happiness 
during the new year now begun. 

'* Believe me ever yours truly, 

*' Caroline Norton." 

On January 27, 1837, Mrs. Shelley, writing to 
Trelawny from Harrow, says : 

" I had a long letter from Mrs. Norton. I admire 
her excessively, and I think I could love her infinitely, 
but I shall not be asked or tried, and shall take very 
good care not to press myself. I know what her 
relations think." 

Many people in those days besides Caroline 
Norton's relations — if, indeed, these last really 
did think of Mrs. Shelley as she suspected — con- 
sidered the daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft and 
Godwin a very perilous influence in the world. And, 
indeed, though she was different enough from the 
dangerous anarchist and social innovator so many 
believed her, she was yet sufficiently imbued with the 
vague poetic liberalism of her husband to be a deeply 
sympathetic companion to any one suffering from the 
cruel custom of society. And she had always admired 
Mrs. Norton, shrinkingly, indeed, with a sort of 
sensitive alertness to possible snubs or hardness. 

There is a pretty letter of hers written somewhat 
earlier, on this subject, to Trelawny, which may be 
given here: 

To Trelawny from Mrs. Shelley 

'■'■ October 12, 1835. 

" I do not wonder at your not being able to deny 
yourself the pleasure of Mrs. Norton's society. I 
never saw a woman I thought so fascinating. Had 
I been a man I should certainly have fallen in love 
with her ; as a woman, ten years ago, I should have 
been spellbound, and had she taken the trouble, she 



1837] SERGEANT TALFOURD 137 

might have wound me round her finger. Ten years 
ago I was so ready to give myself away, and being 
afraid of men, I was apt to get ' tousy-mousy ' for 
women : experience and suffering have altered all that. 
I am more wrapt up in myself, my own feelings, 
disasters, and prospects for rercy. 1 am now proof, 
as Hamlet says, both against man and woman. 

" There is something in the pretty way in which 
Mrs. Norton's witticisms glide, as it were, from her 
lips that is very charming; and then her colour, which 
is so variable — the eloquent blood, which ebbs and 
flows, mounting, as she speaks, into her neck and 
temples, and then receding as fast — it reminds me of 
the frequent quotation of 'eloquent blood,' and gives 
a peculiar attraction to her conversation ; not to speak 
of fine eyes and open brow. 

" Now do not, in your usual silly way, show her 
what I say. She is, despite all her talent and sweet- 
ness, a London lady. She would guy me — not, per- 
haps, to you (well do I know the London ton !) but to 
every one else — in her prettiest way." 

But sorrow and sympathy brought those two dis- 
similar natures much nearer together than Mrs. Shelley 
in those days would have thought possible. 

Mrs. Norton's next letter goes on with the account 
of her new literary labour. 



"16, Green Street, Grosvenor Square, 
^'■February i. 

" Dear Mrs. Shelley, 

" I have been expecting to write to you every 
day to send my pamphlet. My pamphlet must still 
follow my letter. There was such a division in my 
family as to what I might and might not do, and such 
an outcry about the indelicacy of public appeal, that 
I delayed the press, hoping to be able to win over my 

Eeople to my views. To-night Talfourd (blessed be 
is name for that same, and a crown of glory to him ! 
as the Irish say) has given notice of a motion in the 
House of Commons to alter this law. I thought you 
would be glad to know this, both for the sake of the 
sex (whom you have not the clever woman's affectation 



138 THE INFANT CUSTODY BILL [chap, xi 

of thinking inferior to men) and for me, whose first 
glad feeling for many months of struggling has been 
the public notice of an effort, at least, to be made in 
behalf of mothers. 

" I do not know Mr. Talfourd personally, but I 
asked Mr. Hayward (who seems a great friend of his) 
to request him to undertake the task. I hardly hoped 
for such prompt acquiescence ; but if I had to choose 
from the whole House of Commons, I could not choose 
a man whose talent and good feeling and weight with 
the House would give a better or so good a chance 
of success. 

" He has the printed proof of my pamphlet. As 
soon as another is struck off, to correct the last few 
errors, I will send you a tidy copy; only, as I have 
now attained my great object of having it discussed in 
Parliament, and as some of my family are so averse 
to my writing on the subject, I shall only give a very 
few copies — one half-dozen, perhaps, out of my own 
family — and you will not lend it, to oblige me. I am 
afraid you were displeased at one sentence in my last 
letter. I think I was misunderstood, but I will not 
make awkward attempts at explanations. Though I 
believe you have some doubts of my general sincerity, 
in spite of my conviction that living in the world only 
alters the manner, not the feelings — I wish to God it 
did the latter, and perhaps I should not be so wretched 
just now. From which 'just now* I except to-day; 
for to-day the sunshine has slanted in at the windows 
of my heart, and I look forward to this motion of 
Talfourd with an eagerness I have wasted on many 
less worthy and less earnest hopes. 

" I shall not write any more, my hand and head 
being equally tired with letters, and two after mid- 
night having just sounded. I hope you will soon be 
in town, and that I shall see something of you. I 
hear you will be nearer me by a good deal than when 
Belgrave Place was your dwelling. 

" I never felt so fagged in my life. 

" Yours ever truly, 

"Caroline N." 

Serjeant-at-law Talfourd, to give him his legal 
appellation at that time, was a young Whig barrister, 



1837] TALFOURD'S MOTION 139 

already known in his profession as one of the junior 
counsel for the defendant in the recent trial Norton 
V. Lord Melbourne, and soon to be known in literature 
as the author of the poetical drama Ion ; a man of a 
respectable though not distinguished family (his father 
was a brewer), of an excellent reputation in his pro- 
fession and in Parliament (where he had held a seat 
since 1835); less remarkable, however, from any 
brilliant or forensic quality than from the zeal and 
laborious care which he expended on everything he 
took in hand. 

He was the more ready to listen to Mrs. Norton's 
request that he should take up and carry her Bill for 
her because of his personal experience of the working 
of the law as it stood, experience obtained as counsel 
for the father against the mother in two cases of ex- 
ceptional cruelty and injustice to the latter, both of 
which cases had been decided for his client because, 
as the law stood, the Courts were powerless to do 
otherwise. 

His Bill, brought in two months after his notice of 
the motion already mentioned in Mrs. Norton's letter 
to Mrs. Shelley (p. 137), was printed, and its second 
reading was set for May 24. On May 24, however, it 
was postponed again for two weeks ; and again for two 
weeks more. King William's death occurred in the 
meantime, and on June 24 Serjeant Talfourd rose again 
to say that he did not intend to press his measure 
during that session ; that it was a subject of great 
delicacy and importance, and he himself was not 
entirely satisfied with the working details of the Bill. 

Possibly Mrs. Norton herself was not unwilling to 
let things drift a little at this particular moment, for it 
was then, after the Bill had come up for a first reading, 
that her husband made his first unstable effort towards 
a reconciliation, and that she got her children back 
again, at least for a few weeks. All through May and 
June 1837 she had them with her nearly every day. 

So when the Bill she had been so passionately 



I40 THE INFANT CUSTODY BILL [chap, xi 

advocating through the earlier weeks of the Parlia- 
mentary session was withdrawn in June, before its 
second reading, some people shrugged their shoulders, 
and a certain Tory review in summing up the history 
of the measure when it was brought up again a year 
later ventured to suggest a certain intimate relation 
between the Bill's temporary collapse and the 
favourable turn taken about the same time in the 
" Norton negotiations." Such suggestion, implying 
petty personal aims in what ought to be a purely 
public measure, was sure to strike deep and leave a 
poisoned wound in a person so sensitive and so frank 
as Mrs. Norton. For it had its residuum of truth. 

Her power over the Bill was her personal influence 
— her influence was strongest when her feeling was at 
its height. Distracted between hope and despair in 
her renewed relations with her husband and children, 
she would have been more or less than human if 
her first enthusiasm for this paper abstraction had 
remained at the necessary heat for influencing others 
to its service. 

It could hardly have been by her intention that the 
Bill languished and died in the session of 1837 without 
ever coming to its second reading. If it was her fault, 
then, by the same token, its final success in suc- 
ceeding years must be put entirely to her credit. 

There was not even a glimmer or hope of personal 
happiness to distract her interest from the same 
measure when it was brought up again before the new 
Parliament in the short session at the end of 1837. 
It came up for a second reading in May 1838, and all 
the time it lay dormant in that exceptionally busy 
session, she was making every effort to interest 
friends for it in high places, and her own pamphlet 
already printed early in 1837 with its endless title, 
" Observation on the Natural Claim of a Mother 
to the Custody of her Children as affected by the 
Common Law Right of the Father, illustrated by Cases 
of Peculiar Hardship," was distributed among M.P.'s to 



1838] "THE CASE OF THE HON. MRS. NORTON" 141 

influence their vote in its favour. The pamphlet must 
once, therefore, have been easily attainable. It is 
now, however, exceedingly rare. In fact, I know of 
only one copy, mentioned in the catalogue of the 
library collected by the late Lord Dufferin in the 
building on his estate of Clandeboye, called after his 
mother, " Helen's Tower." 

Another little pamphlet, " The Case of the Hon. 
Mrs. Norton," written in the third person, without 
the author's name, but none the less by her, was 
probably distributed at the same time for the same 
purpose. There is in the Astor Library in New York 
a copy of this pamphlet which was once the property 
of Lady Mary Fox, a daughter of William IV., and a 
personal friend of Mrs. Norton. 

Not by these means alone, but in a hundred in- 
direct ways, was she able to advance the Bill through 
the Commons. 

We have! an amusing little letter of advice, drawn 
evidently from her own experiences, to encourage 
Mrs. Shelley, again struggling to win some permanent 
annuity from her stepmother, the sum she had at 
first obtained from the King's bounty having been 
withdrawn at King William's death. 

" 24, Bolton Street. 

"Anything I can say or do in the matter you 
may depend on my saying and doing ; nothing worries 
me, except the great uncertainty of making people 
feel on these sorts of occasions. I think the letter to 
Lord Melbourne very good. I think the other a little 
long. I would begin direct to the point : ' As the 
daughter of the late Mr. Godwin, and the person on 
whom his aged widow mainly relies for support, I 
venture to address you on the subject of obtaining/ 
etc. 

" Press not on the politics of Mr. Godwin (for God 
knows how much gratitude for that ever survives), 
but on his celebrity, the widow's age and ill-health, 
and (if your proud little spirit will bear it) on your 
toils, for, after all, the truth is that you, being generous, 



142 THE INFANT CUSTODY BILL [chap, xi 

will, rather than see the old creature starve, work 
your brains and your pen ; and you have your son 
and delicate health to hinder you from having means 
to help her. 

"As to petitioning, no one dislikes begging more 
than I do, especially when one begs for what seems 
mere justice ; but I have long observed that though 
people will resist claims (however just) they like to 
do favours. Therefore, when I beg I am a crawling 
lizard, a humble toad, a brown snake in cold weather, 
or any other simile most feebly ' rampante,' the reverse 
of * rampant,' which would be the natural attitude for 
petitioning, but which must be never assumed except 
in the poodle style, standing with one's paws bent to 
catch the bits of bread on one's nose. 

"Forgive my jesting. Upon my honour, I feel sin- 
cerely anxious for your anxiety, and sad enough on 
my own affairs ; but Irish blood will dance. My 
meaning is, that if one asks at all, one should rather 
think of the person written to than one's own feelings. 
He is an indolent man — talk of your literary labours ; 
a kind man — talk of her age and infirmities ; a patron 
of all genius — talk of 3^our father's and your own ; 
a prudent man — speak of the likelihood of the pension 
being a short grant (as you have done) ; lastly, he is a 
great man — take it all as a personal favour. 

"As to not apologising for the intrusion, we ought 
always to kneel down and beg pardon for daring to 
remind people that we are not so well off as they are. 
Not knowing whether these are the letters or only 
copies of the letters, I have not kept them. Did you 
mean me to send the one to Lord Melbourne?" 

" Yours ever truly, 

"C.N." 

But another letter, written more about Mrs. Shelley's 
affairs than her own, shows the more clearly the strain 
of nerves and mind the struggle at last imposed 
upon her. 

" I have so bad a headache, I must lie down or 
go to bed instead of coming to see you. About the 

Eension, I would advise that Sir Lytton Bulwer 
imself should ask Lord Melbourne himself. All 



1838] MRS. GODWIN'S PENSION 143 

intermediaries bear the same proportion of use in 
transacting business that fal-lal-la does to the words 
of a song; and though Lord M. threatens that he will 
instantly desire an annuity may be bought for Mrs. 
Godwin out of the proceeds of * Devereux ' and ' Paul 
Clifford,' yet I think the case not so desperate. He 
will do much more, being persuaded that it is fit and 
rational and right, than as a favour to any one. 

" Sir Lytton Bulwer (what a pretty name it is) is a 
personal favourite — at least, I have heard him praise 
him, not only for talents, which all admit, but in a 
friendly, approving way : being a man, and a man of 
some weight, I think if he took the trouble to write on 
the subject it would do more than our petitioning ; it 
would make it a grave matter of business. 

" I perceive no earthly obstacle except the old and 
usual scruple that if the rule is relaxed, and the con- 
nections of men of genius are to have claims, there will 
be no end of pensioning. I think you will get what 
you want for Mrs. Godwin nevertheless. Excuse 
bluntness. I am in pain ; and I wish to be understood. 

" I was much disappointed at not getting what I 
hoped, a completely definite answer to send you, but 
one must take people as their natures will let one, and 
it is the nature of the petitioned to give indefinite 
answers. No one has pressed it yet on Lord 
Melbourne's attention, and he does not know who is 
the great instrument expected to do it. I am going to 
write to Sir L. B. myself on behalf of an Italian who 
wants to translate English novels ; and I will say 
this to him, or you can. I scrawl because I ache and 
am impatient. 

" Yours ever, 
" C. N." 

One more letter of the same series shows another 
phase of this acquaintanceship. 

" You certainly are the pleasantest note-writer 
in the world, but your conduct in money matters is 
not so praiseworthy. If you insist on paying for your 
place in the balcony, well and good : it is ungenteel to 
refuse to be paid ; only I will say frankly once for all 
what I feel about it. I am conscious of being — I 
will not say extravagant, for that implies habitual 



144 THE INFANT CUSTODY BILL [chap, xi 

self-indulgence in money matters — but reckless (when 
I am out of spirits or want to be amused and excited) 
in what I spend for the moment. Now that may suit 
me very well (though sometimes even I repent), but 
it cannot suit the friends who are with me to be 
suddenly called upon to share in the caprices of these 
oppressive hours. The only thing you will achieve 
by making me think that we must share, is that I shall 
sometimes check myself, which is disagreeable to me, 
or sometimes be alone when it would be infinitely 
pleasanter to me to be in your frank and cheerful 
company. It genes me to be paid for pleasures which 
I should equally have paid for alone (if a woman 
could run about alone like a young bachelor), and as I 
know you practise self-denial and serve those who 
belong to you, I think it vexes me more in you than 
it would in any other person. I am very prosy, and I 
have no change. I send back the sovereign (in a 
blank cover like a letter in a novel which the heroine 
has received), and for the future we will stand at the 
door of great places of amusement, consulting not our 
inclinations, but our pockets, with mutual deference 
and respect. 

" I have been ill all day. I almost wish Thursday 
past. All you can do (and that is pretty much to ask 
of a lady) is to sit with me in whatever pot-house 
I may take up my abode, Monday. 

[She and her uncle moved some time in 1838 from 
Green to Bolton Street.] 

" I shall know better to-morrow morning what im- 
plements can be had. You will smile when you hear 
who I sent as T.'s substitute. My hand shakes so ! 
What is the difference between courage and nerve ? 
I suppose a more fearless woman does not exist as to 
actual bodily danger, and yet I am an ass on these 
occasions. 

" I was amused yesterday, and I feel comfortable 
with Tolstoi ; he is warm-hearted and sincere, and I 
have been used to him for six years, which is always 
a merit — or feels like one — in a friend ; also he knows 
all my past joys and sorrows. " Kiss and love," yes, 
Kisselieff (delightful are your comments on him) is 



1838] BILL PASSES THE COMMONS 145 

not so pleasing ; perhaps the very effort to fall into 
our ways and be cosy made him less so. To be 
familiar without being intimate is to canter an 
unbroken horse, uneasy and uncertain, not to say 
dangerous." 

Tolstoi was an attache of the Russian Embassy, 
removed from Great Britain to Paris before Mrs. 
Norton's separation from her husband. But he and 
KisseliefF were both in London with the crowd of 
foreign diplomats assembled there for the Queen's 
coronation in 1838. 

The Bill passed the Commons in May 1838 by 91 to 
17, a very small attendance in a House of 656 members. 
But it had been thought best by its supporters not 
to make it a Government measure. So the Tory 
Disraeli was found, when it came to a division, side 
by side with the Whig Charles Villiers and the 
Radical Daniel Harvey, among those who voted in 
its favour. But on neither side appeared the name 
of Mrs. Norton's uncle, Sir James Graham, who had 
resigned the Admiralty and seceded from the Whig 
party in 1836. And the historian Grote for some 
reason always voted against it ; also the late Lord 
Chancellor of Ireland and future Lord Chancellor of 
England, Edward Sugden, afterwards Lord St. 
Leonards, who opposed it with all his might at every 
stage of its progress. 

Nothing is more remarkable in the speeches made 
against it in the Commons than the general assumption 
that all women at variance with their husbands must 
be guilty of unchastity ; and though on a motion of 
Lord Mahon an amendment was introduced in the Bill 
strictly limiting its advantages to such women as 
could prove the spotlessness of their reputation by 
affidavit, still the objection went on being raised that 
if the measure were once passed it would be im- 
possible to keep unchaste women from getting access 
to their children. The fact that by the existing law 
a father could remove his children from a virtuous 

19 



146 THE INFANT CUSTODY BILL [chap, xi 

mother and give them to his mistress — and indeed in 
one instance had actually done so — was calmly and 
constantly overlooked ; and there was another con- 
viction, equally deep-rooted, and insisted upon by 
Mr. Sugden and those who voted with him, that the 
slightest loosing of the restrictions by which women 
were bound, the slightest concession in their favour 
would change them all, even those who had hitherto 
been most faithful and devoted wives and mothers, 
into a dangerous menace to society. 

Lord Lyndhurst had been entrusted with the intro- 
duction of the Bill to the Lords — the Law Lords, to 
speak more strictly — to whose particular attention it 
was the custom of this House to delegate any Bill 
dealing with legal matters, not by any general rule 
indeed ; rather by general habit. For, to quote Mrs. 
Norton in her most flippant manner, commenting on 
the disinclination of hereditary legislators to take an 
interest, as the Commons did, in any matter they 
could by any means escape or delegate to others : 

" You cannot get Peers to sit up till three in the 
morning listening to the wrongs of separated wives. 
They are disturbed at the preposterous importance 
set by women on the society of their infant children, 
and doubtful as to the effect of such a claim on the 
authority of the heads of families. It is a relief to 
shift responsibility. They are content to sink back in 
a cushioned carriage, satisfied that Abinger's opinion 
or Wynford's speech or Brougham's opposition will 
fairly settle what may be the amount of endurance a 
woman shall be legally bound to undergo." 

Lord Holland and the Duke of Sutherland and Lord 
Denman were among the Bill's supporters in the 
Lords ; Mrs. Norton's old enemy. Lord Wynford, of 
course voted against it. But its most bitter and 
brilliant opponent was the ex-Chancellor Brougham, 
whose former admiration for her had been apparently 
cooled by later events, or had never been strong 
enough to break through his custom just then of 



1838] DEFEATED BY THE LORDS 147 

opposing anything advocated by Lord Lyndhurst. 
His speech against the Bill was a triumph of sophistry. 
Its tenor is shown by the following friendly, indignant 
little letter from Lord Holland to Mrs. Norton : 

"1839. 

" Nothing could be worse, in logick and feeling, than 
his (Brougham's) speech on the Bill. It was that, 
several legal hardships being of necessity inflicted on 
women, therefore we should not relieve them from 
those which are not necessary, although repugnant to 
the feelings of our nature, and indeed to nature itself 

" Whenever and whence-ever Lyndhurst proposes 
his Bill — from the woolsack or benches — he will find 
me on the seat fate may assign me, ready to support 
it. I honour him for not sacrificing his feelings on this 
occasion, either to the pedantry of law or the con- 
venience of politicks, and I heartily wish him success 
in the Bill, 

"Yours, 

" Vassal Holland." 

But a majority of the Law Lords were against it. 
It was rejected by them in August 1838, and all the 
labour of the past session was to be done over again. 



CHAPTER XII 



INFANT CUSTODY BILL — LETTER TO THE LORD 
CHANCELLOR — VISIT TO ITALY 

The failure of the Infant Custody Bill was not the 
most painful event of this summer of 1838 — the summer 
of the Queen's coronation. Indeed, even the Queen's 
coronation had brought for Mrs. Norton only a series 
of exasperating and painful experiences. We hear of 
her at Lord Lansdowne's great ball given just before 
the all-important event ; and almost the same day we 
can read in the papers a long account of the odious 
civil suit before Lord Abinger, where all her private 
affairs were freely exposed to prove her husband's non- 
liability to support her. And while the Lords were 
still debating the Bill on which so much of her future 
happiness depended, The British and Foreign Review^ 
a Tory quarterly of some note in its day, but which 
has long since ceased to exist, published in its August 
number the insulting attack of which we have already 
made mention. 

It was a very virulent and offensive article, in which, 
after a long arraignment of the Bill itself, the last few 
pages were taken up by a personal attack upon both 
Serjeant Talfourd and Mrs. Norton, coupling their 
names together in offensive innuendo, accusing Mr. 
Talfourd of being the tool of a dangerous woman, who, 
besides being an undutiful and rebellious wife, was 

148 



1838] WOMAN'S RIGHTS 149 

also the author of several violent pamphlets on the 
equality of the sexes. 

The first impulse of the chief victim of this attack on 
seeing herself thus publicly insulted was to bring a 
suit for libel against The Review, for the false state- 
ments with which its pages were bristling ; and her 
discovery that a married woman had no right to sue 
apart from her husband did not diminish the exaspera- 
tion with which she prepared the only retaliation in 
her power, a letter to Mr. Fonblanque's paper, The 
Examiner, a letter afterwards reprinted in The Times. 

This public defence is chiefly interesting for its 
passionate denial that the delay in the progress of the 
Bill arose from " the Norton negotiations taking a 
more favourable turn." 

" The delay, I believe, was to improve the details of 
the Bill, and if it should please God to-day to give me 
back my little children, my interest for the measure 
would still continue. It did not begin with my own 
misfortunes, and will not end with them." 

The letter is interesting also for its extreme eager- 
ness to disprove the imputation that she was in any 
way connected with that band of strong-minded 
women who had even then begun to preach the equality 
of the sexes and to make loud general declarations on 
the rights and wrongs of women. 

To such doctrines she was indeed to the end of her 
life fluently opposed. Many years after the writing 
of this letter, she was just as ready to declare her 
opinion that — 

" The wild and stupid theories advanced by a few 
women, of * equal rights ' and ' equal intelligence ' are 
not the opinions of their sex. I, for one (I, with 
millions more), believe in the natural superiority of 
man, as I do in the existence of a God. 

" The natural position of woman is inferiority to 
man. Amen! That is a thing of God's appointing, 
^not of man's devising. I believe it sincerely, as a part 



I50 LETTER TO THE LORD CHANCELLOR [chap, xii 

of my religion. I never pretended to the wild and 
ridiculous doctrine of equality." 



These sentiments sound strangely now, especially 
from a woman who did such good practical service 
towards making women equal with men, at least before 
the law. But they are very characteristic of her type 
of mind, English, I may say, even more than feminine — 
practical rather than speculative, impatient, or even a 
little scornful of the theory, while most busy tinkering 
at the reforms of which the theory is the soul and 
spirit. She was always more interested in the pro- 
tection of women by men, or if men failed them by the 
law, than in any inherent right women might be 
proved to possess for self-direction or self-assertion. 
Women had only one right, she was constantly de- 
claring, and that was to protection from those wiser 
and stronger than themselves. It was this which she 
urged most constantly in her crusade for her measure, 
and with the best results. 

But though able and eager to defend herself from the 
attack which her activities in this direction had excited 
against her, a letter of hers, written months afterwards 
to Murray, shows her still bruised and aching from 
the pelting of coarse words she had received upon 
that occasion : 



"24, Bolton Street, Monday. 

" Dear Sir, 

" You have been very kind in sending me books. 
I send you a very interesting one, in my opinion, 
though I fear not one of general interest. It is a 
letter to the Lord Chancellor on the subject of the 
Infant Custody Bill ; and in the course of which (in 
answer to a direct and most bitter personal attack 
made on me by Mr. John Kemble) the facts of my case 
are briefly given. 

" 1 hope you will read the letter and let me know 
your opinion upon it. Mr. Kemble's attack wrung 
from me a contradiction last summer, which first 



1838] SELF-DEFENCE 151 

appeared in The Examiner (signed with my name) and 
afterwards was copied into other papers. It is so easy 
to crush a woman, especially one whose reputation has 
been already slandered, that I do not think his triumph 
is very great, in having created a prejudice by inventing 
a gross falsehood ; attributing to me that which I never 
wrote, and then abusing me in very foul and gross 
language as the author. I might in the same way 
assert that the Bishop of London wrote Little's poems, 
and that he was therefore a disgrace to the Bench of 
Bishops. 

" Dear Sir, I do not suppose this letter will be of 
sufficient consequence to be reviewed in The Quarterly^ 
but the subject of the letter will perhaps be noticed, as 
it is one of the questions to be noticed this session. I 
entreat of you, if such shall be the case, to use your 
influence to prevent my name (which has grown to be 
only the watchword of insult and cruel abuse) from 
being any more alluded to. Let those who dislike me 
be satisfied in the assurance that I have suffered, and 
do suffer, as much, I believe, as my worst foes could 
wish. I have one poor boast, and that is, that my foes 
are all among strangers ; it is reserved for those who 
never knew me personally, who perhaps never saw me 
in their lives, to erect themselves into judges of my 
character and motives, to erect an imaginary Mrs. 
Norton, something between a barn-actress and a Mary 
Wollstonecraft, and to hunt her down with unceasing 
perseverance ; while the reality of this shadow is 
perhaps lying ill and broken-hearted, as I was at the 
time when Mr. Kemble wrote against me, vainly 
endeavouring, through the mediation of those who 
do know me, to arrange a quarrel I never sought, 
and which took place under circumstances the very 
reverse of those supposed by the world. I have tres- 
passed on your indulgence with a very long note ; pray 
excuse it, and 

" Believe me, yours truly obliged, 

" Caroline Norton." 

The " Letter to the Lord Chancellor," mentioned in 
her note to Murray, was not the least result of a 
summer of wretched struggle with her creditors and 
her husband through her creditors in the law-courts, 



152 LETTER TO THE LORD CHANCELLOR [chap, xii 

of libellous abuse for which her anomalous position 
allowed her no remedy. This second pamphlet was 
printed for distribution to members of Parliament in 
December 1838, and used by her to help carry her Bill 
through its third Parliamentary session. 

A copy of it is to be seen in the Lenox Library in 
New York. " A Plain Letter to the Lord Chancellor 
on the Law of Custody of Infants," by Pearse Stevenson, 
Esq., with a little inscription written under the pseudo- 
nym, in her own handwriting, explaining that it was 
" a name adopted, as I feared, if they knew it was a 
woman's writing, it would have less weight." 

A polemical tract on a long-dead issue ! And yet it 
can still be read with interest and pleasure; indeed the 
clearness and precision of its argument, its grace and 
charm of expression, give to her conclusions a sort of 
brilliancy, like her own wit and beauty. Many pages, 
too, can be taken quite unreservedly as autobiography, 
all the more interesting, perhaps, from the restraints 
imposed upon her by her assumed character of a 
grave, unimpassioned barrister. The little passage, 
for instance, of a bride's relations to her husband's 
family, is notably from her own experience : 

" The son, and brother, goes out into the world and 
selects a wife to please himself ; he brings this stranger 
(who is, and expects to be, all in all to him) into the 
bosom of his own family — persons utterly dissimilar, 
perhaps in every thought and feeling, educated in 
opposite opinions and prejudices, are thus suddenly 
forced into companionship and intimacy; a natural 
and affectionate jealousy of the husband, son, and 
brother, who is the common link between them, 
diminishes the small portion of indulgence which, 
under the circumstances, each might be willing to 
accord the other ; they become mutually disagreeable ; 
the bride wonders how her ' beloved Henry ' could 
have sprung up among such odious people ; the family 
marvel at his rashness in marrying so unamiable a 
person. All this dissatisfaction is increased if the 
bride be a wit, a beauty, a fortune (though that is 



1838] ANOTHER PAMPHLET 153 

generally the safest quality she can possess), or in any 
way entitled to give herself a few of those pretty airs 
so common in a bridegroom's idol." 

Then follows an account of the unfortunate results 
if both families-in-law meddle in the differences 
between husband and wife — not the smallest cause, 
indeed, of her own sufferings : 

*' The two families instantly enroll themselves 
with a bitterness of animosity which no one who has 
not witnessed it would believe, and which frequently 
far outdoes the feelings of resentment burning in the 
hearts of the two principals. The husband is taunted 
into frenzy ; the wife is encouraged to defiance ; the 
smallest concession on his part is treated by his 
family as folly, weakness, dishonourable submission. 
The wife finds she has to struggle, not against one 
angry man, but against a whole regiment of angry 
men and women, to whom, perhaps, the only real 
offence of her life has been * that having eyes he chose 
her,' and that she, being young and pretty, and he 
much in love, exercised at one time more influence 
over him than father, mother, brother, or sister." 

Here is a passage which gives direct admittance 
to her mind, as she thought of her own husband and 
her own relations, past and to come, with the little 
children that belonged to both him and her : 

" It would be impossible to explain to children of 
tender age the circumstances of a family quarrel ; no 
woman would be mad enough to attempt it, knowing 
that the only effect must be to shake and unsettle their 
minds on the great principle of parental duty, without 
giving her any advantage in their affection which an 
hour's persuasion and reasoning from their other 
parent might not equally undo. 

" Besides, it is not only probable, but natural, that 
in some cases a woman may heartily and sincerely 
desire that her children may love their father, although 
she be separated from them. As to justification, she is 
very unlikely to need one. There is so strong an 

20 



154 LETTER TO THE LORD CHANCELLOR [chap, xii 

instinct of affection implanted by God in the young 
child's heart towards the being who has watched over 
his helpless infancy, that the difficulty is to be found, 
not in justifying a mother in his eyes, or preserving 
a due share of fondness for her, but on the contrary, 
in any way degrading, or bringing him to dislike or 
forget her. You may teach a child that his mother is 
an object of contempt or hatred to those around him ; 
he will feel and know it, as it were, by instinct, for 
children are most accurate observers. You may teach 
him to hush his little voice to a whisper when he 
utters her forbidden name, or never to pronounce it, 
for this is only an eff'ort of his half-matured reason to 
show submission and compliance to those in authority 
over him ; but nature's great instinct will remain 
nevertheless, strong and unchangeable, except in rare 
instances. He will love and honour his mother, he 
will sometimes wonder at her absence, and sometimes 
pine for her return ; he will comprehend that she is 
the subject of vehement displeasure, without com- 
prehending that she has deserved it ; he will perceive 
that there is a quarrel, but nothing else." 

It is interesting to find a most enthusiastic criticism 
of this pamphlet in a letter of the American jurist, 
Sumner, who was being honourably received in 
London during the winter of 1839. ^^ fii^d it in 
Pierce's Life of that statesman, under the date of 
February 16. 

" One of the pleasantest dinners I ever enjoyed was 
with Mrs. Norton. She now lives with her uncle, 
Mr. Charles Sheridan, who is a bachelor. We had a 
small company : old Edward Ellice ; Fonblanque, whose 
writings you so much admire ; Hayward, Phipps, 
the brother of the Marquis of Normanby ; Lady 
Seymour, the sister of Mrs. Norton ; and Lady Graham 
and Mrs. Phipps. All of these are very clever people. 
Ellice is the person whose influence is said, more than 
that of all other men, to keep the present Ministry in 
power. 

" But the women were far more remarkable than the 
men. I unhesitatingly say that they were the four 



1839] CHARLES SUMNER ON MRS. NORTON 155 

most beautiful, clever, and accomplished women I have 
ever seen together. The beauty of Mrs. Norton has 
never been exaggerated. It is brilliant and refined. 
Her countenance is lighted by eyes of the intensest 
brightness, and her features are of the greatest 
regularity. There is something tropical in her look, 
it is so intensely bright and burning, with large dark 
eyes, dark hair, and Italian complexion. And her 
conversation is so pleasant and powerful, without 
being masculine ; or rather it is masculine without 
being mannish ; there is the grace and ease of the 
woman, with a strength and skill of which any man 
might well be proud. 

" Mrs. Norton is about twenty-eight [she was nearly 
thirty-one] and is, I believe, a grossly slandered 
woman. She has been a woman of fashion, and has 
received many attentions, which doubtless she would 
have declined had she been brought up under the 
advice of a mother, but which we may not wonder 
she did not decline, circumstanced as she was. It will 
be enough for you, and I doubt not you will be happy 
to hear it of so remarkable and beautiful a woman, 
that I believe her utterly innocent of the grave charges 
that have been brought against her. I count her one 
of the brightest intellects I have ever met. I whisper 
in your ear what is not to be published abroad, that 
she is the unaided author of a tract which has just 
been published on the Infant Custody Bill, and pur- 

forts to be by Pearse Stevenson, Esq., 2i nom de guerre. 
think it is one of the most remarkable things from 
the pen of a woman. The world here does not suspect 
her, but supposes that the tract is the production of 
some grave barrister. It is one of the best discussions 
on a legislative matter I have ever read. 

" I should have thought Mrs. Norton the most beau- 
tiful woman I had ever seen if her sister, Lady Seymour, 
had not been present. I think that Lady Seymour is 
generally considered the most beautiful. Her style 
of beauty is unlike Mrs. Norton's ; her features are 
smaller, and her countenance lighter and more English. 
In any other drawing-room she would have been 
deemed quite clever and accomphshed, but Mrs. 
Norton's claims to these last characteristics are so 
pre-eminent as to dwarf the talents and attainments 



156 INFANT CUSTODY BILL [chap, xii 

of others of her sex who are by her side. Lady 
Seymour has no claim to literary distinction. The 
homage she receives is offered to her beauty and 
her social position. Lady Graham is older than 
these; while Mrs. Phipps is younger. These two 
were only inferior in beauty to Mrs. Norton and Lady 
Seymour." 



We hear of her again from another American, John 
Van Buren, son of the President of the United States, 
who had come to England for the Queen's coronation, 
and was still lingering there in March of the following 
year. 

He met her at a reception at Babbage's, standing in 
a doorway, talking to Mr. Talfourd. She was very 
gracious to him and he admired her conversation, but 
her beauty was so unlike the fragile loveliness of his 
own countrywomen that he was not entirely pleased 
with " that superb lump of flesh," as Sidney Smith 
once jokingly called her. She had never a graceful 
figure. Her splendid, heavy head was set well forward 
on her neck, the bend of beauty as our grandmothers 
used to call it ; and though rather above medium 
height, she did not look tall because of a certain 
heaviness and clumsiness of hips and shoulders. 

It was in the summer of this year, 1839, that the 
Bill for which she had fought so long was finally . 
carried, not only through the House, but through ^ 
that cave of Conservative opposition to every Liberal 
measure, the Lords. 

But the strain of the long struggle had had its 
effect upon her health. Her favourite sister, Helen 
Blackwood, Lady Dufferin by her husband's accession 
to the title earlier this same year, was going to spend 
the winter in Southern Italy. It was decided that 
CaroHne should accompany the Dufferins on their 
journey. 

A letter of Mrs. Norton's to the author of " Philip 
Van Artevelt," congratulating him on his marriage 



1839] VISIT TO ITALY 157 

with Miss Spring Rice, mentions also the date of her 
departure : 

"Bolton Street, 

'•''Monday, October 1839. 

" I send you what the children call a ' parting 
present,' having once before had that generous inten- 
tion when you left a whip here by mistake, but at that 
time thought better of it. 

" I hope you will be happy. There is no one, I 
believe, deserves happiness more ; and I also hope, 
when you have power over the destiny of another, 
that you will remember that the most intelligent 
woman God ever made has something of the child in 
disposition, and that the indulgence shown to children 
is as necessary in their case (if you mean either to be 
happy) as with an infant of three years old. Do not 
laugh at me for lecturing my betters. It is only when 
I think of some fresh and uncommenced destiny that I 
look gravely and sadly back at all the mistakes in my 
own ; and I am convinced that, as we bring more 
courage to the endurance of the great than the lesser 
evils of our lives, so we grant more indulgence to the 
real and positive faults of our every-day companions 
than to their moods, their habits, their small wayward- 
nesses, the points where they neither fit our own dis- 
positions nor our preconceived notions of what would 
suit and please us. I hope all will go well with you 
and yours. 

"We start on Friday morning for our Italian tour; 
it is a great change for me. I hope it will be both 
pleasant and beneficial ; I shall then feel more as if 
I had broken and disjointed my past from my future 
than I have yet been able to do. 

" With every good wish, believe me, 
" Yours very truly, 

" Caroline Norton." 

Pleasant and beneficial this first Italian trip must 
have been to that eager, beauty-loving nature, so long 
compelled to struggle in unnatural ways. I quote a 
lovely little bit from her own poetry to show something 



158 MRS. NORTON IN ITALY [chap, xii 

of her ecstasy at this first sight of Italian cities and 
scenery : 

" Beautiful land. When first mine eyes beheld thee, 
Leaped not my heart as though it knew thee well ? 
As though returning from a weary exile 
In my own home I came at length to dwell ? 
All my life long, beholding Beauty's fragments, 
A southern smile on proud impassioned lips, 
A southern shadow 'neath some dreaming eyelid, 
A southern glow, in mist and dull eclipse ; 
Till round me all at once, beloved, familiar, 
Lay the clear glories of the sunny clime, 
And my soul thrilled and trembled with a rapture 
Unknown, unrecked of, in the former time." 

Fisher's Drawing-room Scrap-book for 1846. — "Genoa." 



CHAPTER XIII 

PETITION TO THE LORD CHANCELLOR — DEATH 
OF WILLIAM 

Mrs. Norton was back in England again early in 
1840, busy as usual with law and lawyers. This 
time, however, thanks to her own exertions, she had 
some part of the law on her own side. 

The new Act permitted any mother who was denied 
access to her young children, if she could prove by 
affidavit that her own character was above reproach, 
to petition the Lord Chancellor for a hearing before a 
special court, composed of the Lord Chancellor, the 
Master of the Rolls, or other Chancery judges. The 
court, if convinced of the justice of her cause, could 
grant her access to her children when and how it 
thought best. 

A clever young barrister and Quarterly reviewer, 
whom we have already found frequently mentioned as 
a friend of Mrs. Norton's, undertook to collect the 
affidavits required for her petition. This was Abraham 
Hayward, among whose published letters we find so 
many of her own, signed " C. Client," her nickname 
for herself with him, while her nickname for him was 
"Avocat," for this reason. He never signed his full 
name " Abraham," for he hated it, and could not bear 
the least allusion to it, and she was fully aware of this 
little weakness on his part; so that one day when 
some lady, who was bent on teasing him, asked him in 

159 



i6o PETITION TO THE LORD CHANCELLOR [chap, xiii 

her drawing-room what his " A " stood for, Arthur or 
Andrew, Mrs. Norton, to cover his vexation, quickly 
replied "Oh, dear no, it stands for 'Avocat'"; and 
" Avocat " she always used to call him afterwards, 
styling herself his client. 

I quote his own account of one of his experiences 
while thus engaged in her service. 

" It was necessary to come prepared with affidavits 
negativing the imputation of infidelity ; and one day a 
friend of Mrs. Norton's, engaged in getting up the case, 
[himself] received a message from Lord Melbourne 
requesting him to call the next morning early. Calling 
between ten and eleven, he found Lord Melbourne in 
his dressing-gown and slippers, in the act of shaving. 
* So,' was the abrupt address, * you are going to revive 
that business. It is confoundedly disagreeable.* 

" * You know, my lord, that Mrs. Norton can't live 
without her children.' 

" ' Well, well, if it must be done, it must be done 
effectively. You must have an affidavit from me. The 

story about me was all a d d lie, as you know. Put 

that into proper form and I'll swear it.' " 

But it was necessary for her to prove herself 
guiltless through the years that had already elapsed 
since her separation .from her husband, and it was 
just at this time that a strange, disquieting incident 
occurred, which was noticed in the public papers of 
the day, and brought one at least of the persons 
connected with it into the police courts. 

During the latter part of the year 1840, if not before, 
Mrs. Norton became convinced that not only her 
house, but she herself was being watched, for some 
not very creditable purpose. There were other small 
occurrences, too, amounting at last to a petty perse- 
cution. On one occasion, for instance, she received a 
letter purporting to be on business, requesting her 
to call at a certain address, which turned out to be 
a house of ill-fame. Late in December, she began to 



i84o] MARLBOROUGH POLICE COURT i6i 

notice a rather shabby-looking individual, who seemed 
to haunt the street in which she lived — a sort of anti- 
quated old beau, all powder and white waistcoat, who 
finally introduced himself to her in a letter as Captain 
Edward Piers, lately retired from the army, and living 
on half-pay, who had become so impressed with the 
story of her wrongs that he was ready to offer himself 
as a mediator, or at least conduct her to a place where 
she might see her children. 

Something in the wording of the note, its extra- 
ordinary familiarity with matters only to be gathered 
from her husband and those closest to him, or herself, 
seemed to offer the final link in this strange little chain 
of accidents. She was convinced that this letter, with 
those preceding it, was part of a plot concocted by 
her husband and Lord Grantley to compromise her, 
to increase her difficulties in getting the affidavits 
necessary for her petition to the Chancellor. 

She accordingly decided to have the man arrested 
the next time he made any effort to approach her. 
She had not long to wait. Late one afternoon, a few 
days before Christmas, the man forced his way into 
the house after Mrs. Sheridan, who had just been 
admitted to see her daughter, and even entered a room 
opening from the hall, in spite of the efforts of the 
servant and Mrs. Sheridan to prevent him. He was 
found there by the policeman who had been on duty 
for more than a week for this particular purpose, lost 
in contemplation (such was his impudent assertion 
to the police magistrate) of a picture of the great 
Sheridan, which he had found hanging on the wall, 
and in which he recognised a former patron and 
friend. 

The case came up before the Marlborough police 
court, December 23, but was dismissed, when Mrs. 
Norton, who had appeared against him in person, 
accompanied by her uncle, Mr. Sheridan, consented 
not to press the charge, if the prisoner promised not 
to molest her further. But the prisoner's letter to her, 

21 



i62 PETITION TO THE LORD CHANCELLOR [chap, xiii 

which had to be admitted as evidence, with her own 
imprudent admissions to the judge, when she was 
called to tell her story, soon betrayed the connection 
she believed to exist between this petty persecutor 
and her husband, or her husband's family. 

A full account of the case appeared in the news- 
papers next morning, stirring up all the hardly-laid 
scandals of Lord Melbourne's trial, and even George 
Norton was moved to send a solemn assurance to his 
wife through his fellow-magistrate, Mr. Hardwicke, 
that he had nothing to do with this last attempt to 
molest her. 

But the business of her petition must have dragged 
on to extraordinary length, for we find her in the 
summer of 1841 still waiting and working in the 
matter, writing to Mr. Hayward from her favourite 
Isle of Wight : 

"COWES, July 23, 1841. 
" Dear Avocat, 

"I was sorry not to see you yesterday, having 
(at the risk of the remainder of my reputation here) 
desired the boatman to row me to the steamers each 
time they came in, and each time frankly replying to 
his question, ' It is a gentleman friend as you expects, 
marm ? ' ' Yes, Clarke.' Indeed, but for my boatman 
I should find Cowes dull, but he is a treasure. . . . 
The mixture of wheedling and frankness, of shrewdness 
and simplicity, of great and real kindness to those 
they believe poor, with a very great approximation to 
swindling by monstrous overcharge to those they 
think rich, forms the groundwork of the character of 
your true boatman ; and if you can cross the breed, as 
in this instance, by matching a boatman's daughter 
with a real sailor, the race produced will be quite 
inestimable ; adding to the above primary qualities 
utter fearlessness of danger, great merriment and 
humour, and a peculiar readiness of apprehension 
worth all the intellect and genius in the world ; besides 
a charm of manner quite distinct from taught rules of 
politeness, and yet as good, if not better. The fact 
is, in our ' Island Home ' your boatman is the only 



1841] THE ISLE OF WIGHT 163 

parallel to the peasant of other countries. Farmers 
want to be gentlemen, and often are in every sense of 
the word ; tradesmen want to be rakes and lords, and 
tread on the heels of the faults, manners, and habits, 
etc. of the upper classes. Ploughmen are sulky and 
stupid machines (in general) ; cottagers shy and often 
dispirited and distant neighbours ; your boatman is 
the only fraction of the English masses who at once 
acknowledges the enormous gulf of distance between 
his social position and yours, and asserts with cheerful 
independence his right of brotherhood in spite of that 
distance. You may make him duller by not meeting 
him half-way, but you can't make him less familiar ; 
you may make him happier and gayer by conversing 
merrily with him, but you won't bring him a grain 
nearer insolence. I take that to be the peasant 
character. I am not sure that in the over-educating 
of the classes who never can have our leisure, what- 
ever else they may obtain that is ours, we have not 
destroyed all our companionship with them : they 
climb just close enough to our level to prevent their 
looking up to us ; they elbow us, and we have no 
longer room to stretch out our hand in fellowship 
with them. 

" Pray don't think I am in love with my boatman. 
He is sixty, and very weather-beaten. Give me the 
benefit of * whatever doubt may arise in your mind.' 
I don't wish to prejudice my jury, but I must say he 
showed great sympathy in the non-arrival of my 
' gentleman friend,' and took me (by way of comfort) 
to see a little deserted schooner that had been towed 
into port with nothing but a dog and two canaries on 
board, having been left (supposed sinking) by her 
crew. It was a common sight to him, but he knew it 
would be a little treat for me, and did the honours, 
with a Devonshire House urbanity, of its broken sides, 
torn sails, and disordered rigging. Good Avocat, if you 
can but manage this business, there will be no one I 
shall ever feel so grateful to, and I really think and 
hope you will, and I will make my third son ' look up ' 
to you when he is at the Bar, as a guiding star. Lest 
I should be tempted to add to my most lengthy 
observations on boatmen something on barristers, I 
hastily conclude. Do you believe shrimps are happy ? 



i64 PETITION TO THE LORD CHANCELLOR [chap, xiii 

Great naturalists attribute their incessant skippings 
to the vulgar mode of expressing rapture commonly 
called 'jumping for joy/ but the new school of 
philosophy will rather have it that they are out of 
breath, and trying to reach the water ! On which side 
are you ? Forgive me pursuing you with these marine 
subjects so far inland, and believe me, 

" Ever yours truly, 

"C. Norton." 

And, after all, the case never came to a public 
hearing ; but this only because George Norton at the 
last minute withdrew his opposition and proposed to 
compromise, 

" He yielded," his wife says bitterly, " simply so far 
as the law would have compelled him, and as was 
necessary to save himself from the threatened and 
certain exposure which my appeal under the new 
law would have entailed. I saw my children in the 
most formal and comfortless manner. There was no 
mercy or generosity. I expected none. He even 
made it a personal quarrel with his colleague and 
fellow magistrate, Mr, Hardwicke, because Mr. Hard- 
wicke had permitted me one evening to be in his 
box at the play with my children. He locked the 
children themselves up for a whole day, to punish 
them, and impress upon their memories that they 
were not to be seen with me in any public place. 
Their interviews with me were to be in private, that 
no one might know or guess he had been obliged to 
yield." 

It was during the Christmas holidays of 1841 that 
she was thus grudgingly allowed to see her boys 
again. She was still struggling to exact better terms 
for herself and them in the following spring, March 
1842, when we read of her in the " Reminiscences " of 
Mr. James Hamilton, a son of Alexander, at a party at 
Lord Palmerston's. 

" I saw coming into the room alone a lady in a rich 
black dress, with beautiful black hair plainly dressed, 
and I directly asked who that beautiful woman was. 



1842] MR. JAMES HAMILTON 165 

" My companion said : ' Don't you know her ? That 
is the Honourable Mrs. Norton. Shall I present you 
to her?' 

" And thus I became acquainted with that very 
talented and much-injured woman. Our conversation 
(standing together where I was presented) was ani- 
mated and interesting. 

" I asked her if she was writing anything. 

" She said : * No ! I am in Chancery.' 

'* ' What do you mean ? ' 

" ' I am endeavouring to induce the Chancellor to 
allow me to have my children with me at all times, 
that I may direct their education. At present they 
only come to me for an hour or two on particular 
days.' 

" * Allow me to say, madam, I have a remedy for 
that. I think you said you wished to go to the 
United States?' 

*' * I intend to do so.' 

" * I am to sail next week from Liverpool. I care 
nothing for your Lord Chancellors. The day before, 
when your boys are with you, I will come to your 
door, take them in my carriage, post to Liverpool, go 
on board ship, and you can follow them as soon as 
you please.' 

" This badinage excited and pleased her." 

A small memorial of this meeting is the copy of her 
" Letter to the Lord Chancellor," now found in the 
Lenox library, presented to Mr. Hamilton with its 
autograph inscription by Mrs. Norton, and given 
many years later to the library by Mr. Hamilton's 
grandson. Major Philip Schuyler, of Nevis. 

But her children were never really given back to 
her on the terms she demanded, " to be with her at all 
times, that she might direct their education," until 
a tragic accident had deprived her for ever of the 
youngest of them, and the very pain of a common 
bereavement had compelled a gentler spirit in her 
husband. 

In the autumn of 1842 all three children were, as 
usual, with their father on his Yorkshire estate of 



i66 PETITION TO THE LORD CHANCELLOR [chap, xiii 

Kettlethorpe. when Willie, the baby, by that time 
grown to be a little lad of eight years old, out riding 
alone on his pony, was thrown and, though he was 
only slightly hurt by the fall, blood-poisoning set in 
from neglect of a bad scratch he had received on his 
arm and he died before the arrival of his mother, who 
had been sent for when his condition was judged more 
serious. In her own words : " Sir Fitzroy and Lady 
Kelly were staying with Mr. Norton in the country. 
Lady Kelly (who was an utter stranger to me) met me 
at the railway station. I said : ' I am here. Is my 
boy better ? ' 

" * No,' she said, ' he is not better, he is dead.' And 
I found, instead of my child, a corpse already coffined." 

A letter written at this time by her to Rogers, the 
poet, gives the rest of the story. 

" Mr. Charlesworth's, Chapel Thorpe, 
" Tuesday, Scptevibcr 13. 

" Dearest Mr. Rogers, 

" Thank you for your letter to my boy. He asked 
leave to write to some one who would be ' really sorry,' 
and I gave him your name and my sister Georgiana's. 
I still feel stunned by this sudden blow. The accident 
happened here, and I have been sheltered here ever 
since, and do not leave till Thursday, when my fair 
young thing will be laid in the grave. The room 
here where he died (and which was the first I entered) 
— the room where there was so much hurry and 
agony, and then such dismal silence and darkness — is 
empty and open again, and the little decorated coffin 
is lying at his father's house (about two miles off) 
alone ; for Mr. Norton is gone to Lord Grantley's 
[Grantley Hall] till to-morrow, which is fixed for the 
funeral. He died conscious ; he prayed, and asked 
Norton to pray; he asked for me twice. He did not 
fear to die, and he bore the dreadful spasms of pain 
with a degree of courage which the doctor says he has 
rarely seen in so young a child. He had every atten- 
tion and kindness which could be shown, and every 
comfort which was needed. He was kept here, not 
at first from any apprehension of danger, but because 



1842] DEATH OF WILLIE 167 

in his father's house there is no attendance — nothing 
but an old woman who opens the gate. It may be 
sinful to think bitterly at such a time ; and at least I 
have not uttered the thoughts of my heart ; I have 
choked them back, to spare pain to one who never 
spared it to me ! But it is not in the strength of 
human nature not to think, * This might not have 
happened had I watched over them ! ' or not I ! put 
me, put their mother on one side — make a cipher of 
me, who nursed and bore him. Half what is now so 
lavishly expended in ceremony and decoration of the 
coffin which contains the senseless clay of my little lost 
one would have paid some steady man-servant to be 
in constant attendance on their hours of recreation. 
My poor little spirited creature was too young to 
rough it alone, as he was left to do ; and this is the 
end of it ! When I first came down Mr. Norton was 
in bitter distress, and he comforted me with promises 
for the other boys — for those that remain. But his 
impressions are so weak and wavering that I only 
tremble. Oh ! it is a hard thing that I and my boys — 
that so many hearts should be in the absolute power 
of one who has no heart. In a few days all will be as 
if it had not been, to him ! Already there is a change ; 
already he thinks less of the anguish which made me 
almost kneel for the boy [Brinsley] who is with me 
than of the doubt whether that does not in some ways 
cancel his authority. I have had hard words to bear 
even now, but I am too miserable to shrink from them. 
He was better before Grantley came down. Mean- 
while he has at least allowed me to take Brin with me 
to London for a few days before they return to school ; 
my eldest will also join me for a day or two. They 
return on Saturday, the ist. If you are in town, I 
will ask you to let my boy come to you some morning; 
he is very eager about it. Poor little fellow ! He 
thinks, having seen his father and me weeping to- 
gether, all is once more peace and home. He made 
me write out a list of his relations and of Brinsley's 
and Georgie's children. He is full of eager anticipation 
to make friends of all that belong to me. He was 
dreadfully overcome at first, and had an hysteric fit 
when he saw his brother dead ; but at his age (eleven 
next November), and with his buoyant temper, sorrow 



1 68 PETITION TO THE LORD CHANCELLOR [chap, xiii 

must be very temporary. My other boy's forethought, 
tenderness, and precocious good sense will, if God 
spares him, be the blessing of my life. He under- 
stands, by intuition, all I feel, and all that ought to be. 
He soothes his father, and watches me as if I, not he, 
was the helpless one ; and God knows I am helpless ! 
But my child is out of the storm ; he is in heaven. 
Too young to have offended, he is with those whose 
' angels do always behold the face of our Father.' I 
will write to you again ; good and kind you have 
always been to me. God bless you ; I shall have left 
this on Thursday morning. 

" Your affectionate 

*' Caroline Norton." 

She wrote to her sister, Lady Seymour, a few days 
later : 

" Mr. Charlesworth's, 
" Chapel Thorpe, Wakefield, 

" Tuesday, September 20, 1842. 

" Dear Georgie, 

"My uncle brought me your letter with others 
to-day. He came down to attend the funeral, very 
kindly. You know I do not care about these forms, 
but Norton does, and I asked my uncle, when Norton 
asked me — in the first hour of his distress, which was 
very heavy. But he is better now. You will pro- 
bably get letters I have written to Brinsley and my 
mother, which will tell you all about me, and also a 
letter from poor little Brin with enclosures, and if you 
will write him a line, poor child, you will do me a 
favour, for I allowed him to write to you and Rogers, 
and he is so eager about his answers. He is quite 
recovered, and, indeed, gay again, but had a sort of 
hysteric fit when he first saw death in the little familiar 
face. I believe I should be thankful it is neither of the 
others. I believe it would have been worse to bear if 
it had pleased God to take either of them. But it is of 
no use just yet to struggle after any comfort at all, 
for I cannot feel or think in any way as I should — 
frantic bitterness, great horror, and fear of its being 
an offence to God to feel as I do is all that is present 
with me. 

" The accident would not have happened if they had 



1842] LETTER TO LADY SEYMOUR 169 

the commonest attendance granted to gentlemen's 
sons. It is ea=y to say (as Grantley did) that there 
was no help for it, and it was God's will he should die. 
On that ground we might never call in a doctor, or 
take any other precaution. He died because he was 
too young to rough it alone, as he was obliged to do ; 
and it is in vain to say he did not. He lies now in 
a decorated coffin of purple and silver and enclosing 
one of lead, that when Norton is Lord Grantley he 
may ' remove him if he pleases to the family vault ' : 
a vault has been opened here and built up of brick. 
All that is needless, all that is of ceremony and expense 
now ; but he died in a stranger's house, because there 
were not the common comforts of a sick-room at his 
father's, and in consequence of an accident, which 
might not have occurred if one quarter of the sum 
now lavished on nothing had been paid to a steady 
man-servant to go out with them. There is a funeral 
'party' collected at Norton's house, or rather at 
Grantley's (for there is nothing at Kettlethorpe but 
his little coffin, alone in the dining-room where he 
used to play), but the funeral and all will be over 
to-morrow, and then I shall go away with my uncle. 
Little Brin goes with me and stays till Saturday, 
October i, when both the remaining boys go back to 
school. 

" I did think at first that Norton would be very 
pliable about them, and he wanted me to return to him, 
etc., but I do not in my conscience believe he wills a 
thing two hours running, I have tried and failed in 
the only matter I had at heart, which was to change 
their school [at Eton]. You have no idea what they 
have gone through, or how unfit B. is to be a master. 
Norton said he should ' have to pay for this half at all 
events,' therefore they had better go back, having 
admitted ten minutes before that Fletcher's health 
could not stand it, and that the doctors had warned 
him of that, and having also said he would * lay down 
his life lor his dear boys.' It is all hopeless, and I 
expect Fletcher will be the next to suffer from the 
obstinacy which no event will turn : the only gleam of 
steadiness he has, is perpetually thinking himself in 
the right. I have not reproached him, and this happy 
frame of mind will prevent his reproaching himself. 

22 



I70 PETITION TO THE LORD CHANCELLOR [chap, xiii 

My poor little Willie asked for me twice, but he was too 
little accustomed to me to miss my care or nursing. 
He prayed and died without fear, so young as he was. 
I can feel that he is in heaven. I saw little enough 
of him in this life. God grant I may meet him in 
another ! 

" I hope all yours are well. 

" Yours affectionately, 

*' Caroline. 

•• Give Nell my love." 

There was still a struggle with her husband before 
he would bind himself by legal agreement to admit 
her to a fair share of the companionship of the two 
children left to her. 

There is a letter on this subject written to her sister. 

" Dearest Georgie, 

" I am so nervous that I can't even express 
myself, having my own affairs just talked over and 
hanging on a hair. Talfourd is most kind and earnest. 
They have yielded the point about the children. I am 
to be with them half the year, but Norton wants to 
force me to live at Kettlethorpe that half-year, which 
would never do. That is, in fact, his having them all 
the year and letting me see them five months. I am, 
in fear and trembling, standing firm for their actual 
residence under my own roof. Pray answer me by 
return of post if only a single line, whether you and 
Co. think me right. I am so afraid of missing them 
altogether, and yet so afraid that if I give in I shall be 
cheated. 

" Ever yours, 

** Carry. 

" I hope to come down directly." 

The question of residence was finally decided in her 
favour and a letter to Mr. Rogers from London, where 
she had been permitted to have both her boys with 
her for a little while before they went back to school, 
shows already some measure of a return to her old 
gay courage. 



1842] LETTER TO ROGERS 171 

" Saturday, October 8. 

" Dear old Friend, 

" My boys are gone back to school : the eldest 
only yesterday, as after the funeral he became very 
unwell, and so continued for some days. And now 
I want to leave this house for a little [Bolton Street], 
and come where I hope you still are. You kindly 
wrote to offer to take me rooms ; will you do so ? 
Like Gilpin's well-judging wife, I would have a reason- 
able eye to economy, but as it is for a short time — 
three weeks, or less — and I am sick and sad, I would 
rather be at the hotel than have the trouble of even a 
small house. If I could have a very airy double- 
bedded room and a little sitting-room, my maid and 
I would require nothing more in the way of lodging. 
Then if you would tell the landlady to charge board 
per week, and give me what she pleases — promising 
that I never want and never eat ' pies and cakes and 
dainties,' but really only a morsel of meat and potatoes 
— it would be a very agreeable arrangement to me, as I 
should be spared all thought just now, and live like a lily 
of the field — or a weed of the cliff. There is a business- 
like beginning, like the poetess who desired to borrow 
of you. My boys are nice creatures — intelligent, free- 
spirited, and true ; they are so happy at being reknit 
to me that I can scarcely think of it without weeping. 
Little Brin is brimful of gratitude and love to all who 
ever loved or were kind to me. He made me walk down 
to your house, and we stood outside the little iron gate 
which has so often admitted me for pleasant mornings, 
for some time, talking of the nightingales and Milton's 
receipt for ' Paradise Lost ' and all the treasures in 
your shut-up house. The elder is quieter, more 
thoughtful, less spirited, but seems like an angel to 
me, and his whole care is to keep watch over his 
father's kindness, that it may not flicker or go out 
from me. Mr. Norton has a very great love for them, 
I do believe — more than I thought or expected — and 
young as my eldest boy is, he is allowed the greatest 
mfluence over his father's mind, and uses it with a 
tenderness and tact very unusual at his age. I think 
and hope that we shall now be very friendly together, 
even if we continue apart. Mr. Norton went to the 
school to desire they would consider me equal with 



172 PETITION TO THE LORD CHANCELLOR [chap, xiii 

himself, and not be further controlled as to seeing 
them — to come and go on my own direction. You 
may believe I have no greater anxiety than to satisfy 
him now, and prove to him, poor fellow, that it will 
answer better to allow this peace to fall upon us than 
the long war which is ended. He is very sorry for 
his little one, and very proud of these two. I have 
sent a letter of Brin's to his uncle Brinsley, which I 
will show you, as I think it very touching, and indeed 
it would be good reading for such men as in anger 
resolve to break the tie of mother and child. In it he 
says, * I think I would die of grief if I were parted from 
you again ; you can't think how changed I am. I love 
you and my brother ten times more than I used to do ; 
I love you, Papa, and Spencer beyond any thing or 
person I ever did before.' In the earnestness of his 
child's heart— loving all better than ever, for being 
again in his natural position towards his mother! — 
'tis a lesson which, though simply given, is full of 
truth. I cannot tell you how this letter touched me ; 
I think I feel as he does, that I love every one better 
since I received this dear scrawl of affectionate writing. 
I hope you are well, and that you will be at Broad- 
stairs when you get this and when I arrive. The 
Phippses have gone to Ramsgate on account of the 
child who has been ailing. If I can have one room 
looking on the sea of course I should prefer it, and 
as it is so late in the season perhaps this can be 
accomplished. My boys will be with me again at 
Christmas, and then you will let me bring them to you. 
" Yours affectionately 

" Caroline Norton. 

" I have not had one moment to write while they 
were with me." 

A lovely little poem of hers which appeared in the 
Fisher's Drawing-room Scrap-book of 1848 may well be 
quoted as conclusion to this chapter. 

"The Sons of the Duke of Buccleuch. 1848. 

" Oh, fair ye are, young playmates, and welcome to my sight, 
With your glad eyes full of sunshine, and innocent delight. 
Not for your noble lineage — though in those lovely sons, 
The best blood of all Scotland, its course unsullied runs, 



1842] "THE SONS OF THE DUKE OF BUCCLEUCH" 173 

But for that ye are children, and in life's dawning hour, 

Beauty and love and happiness, seem perfect in their power 

Oh, give me children's voices, the sweet, the clear, the kind. 

Their bursts of merry laughter that float upon the wind ; 

Give me the tranquil glory that shines from children's eyes, 

Their eager, restless questions, their playful, keen replies, 

The freedom of their charity, the fervour of their prayers 

(Which I hear like one who may be guest of 'angels unawares'). 

Their sympathy with sorrow, their ignorance of sin, 

And their wiles to be ' first favourite ' — the utmost love to win ! 

How often from the elder world, whose path is set with thorns, 

Its cares, its struggles — and its woes, its heartburnings, and scorns, 

My soul hath taken refuge within the wayside bowers. 

Where peace and welcome wooed me still, from children and from 

flowers. 
Oh, fair befall ye, little ones I Be happy, little men ! 
A blessing follow all your steps, o'er mountain, rock, and glen. 
A blessing rest on all your paths, along the lone hillside. 
The trees that have o'ershadowed you, the blue lake's placid tide ; 
A blessing on the heathery tracks which saw your frolic play. 
And the moss ye climbed to gather, by the torrent's foaming spray ; 
A blessing on your waking, in the glorious morning light, 
And a blessing on your sleeping in the calm, soft hush of night ! 
And when, oh, lovely children, your northern home you see. 
Look round on all the distant hills and greet them thus from me — 
Say far away in England a little grave is green. 
Of one who roamed those Highland tracts, with spirit fresh and keen, 
And when within the English grave we laid our early dead, 
We sent for flowers from Scotland to bloom above his head. 
He perished young. Oh I noble boys, may ye all live to prove 
Strong men — good hearts — and blessings to the country of your love ; 
May ye preserve, through all life's years of mingled joy and pain, 
A childlike faith in holy things, and prayers not taught in vain, 
A childlike reverence and trust in manhood's fearless heart. 
Nor from that strength of earlier years, in later times depart, 
But keep the name renowned so long in song and ancient story. 
The name of Scott, the proudest still, in Scottish themes of glory." 



CHAPTER XIV 

THE DREAM — THE CHILD OF THE ISLANDS — FISHER'S 
DRAWING-ROOM SCRAP BOOK 

In pursuing to its end the story of Mrs. Norton's 
separation from her children, it has been necessary 
to leave out much that is essential in any complete 
account of her. It will be well, therefore, to turn 
back now for a year or two, to pick up the more 
important of these lost links. 

In the early summer of 1840, a year after the 
passage of the " Infant Custody Bill," we find her 
again before the public as a writer of graceful verse. 
" The Dream and Other Poems " was the name of this 
last collection, in a fine octavo volume published by 
H. Colburn, Great Marlborough Street, illustrated with 
a portrait of herself by Landseer. The great animal 
painter was not so good at human likenesses, and 
though he gives the poise of her head upon her 
shoulders better than Hayter or Maclise succeeded in 
doing, the picture is not especially convincing, and 
is chiefly interesting as a witness of the new-made 
friendship between the painter and the poetess, a 
friendship still evident in the mass of clever sketches 
and caricatures found among her papers with the great 
man's sign across them. 

The principal poem of this collection, " The Dream," 
is the same she had already offered to Murray in 1834 
under a slightly different name — a long, meditative 
piece, narrating a young maiden's dream of happiness 

174 




MRS. NORTON. 
From ciii engraving by F. C. Lewis, after the drawing by Sir Edwin Landseer, R.A 
P- 174] 



1840] REVIEWED BY THE QUARTERLY 175 

with an ideal mate, and her mother's counsels on her 
approaching marriage, in a fashion so long gone by 
that it would find few readers now, in spite of the real 
beauty of many of its passages. 

" Twilight " is one of her shorter poems, often 
chosen to represent her in collections of British poets. 
I will only mention it, therefore, as a touching bit of 
autobiography, drawn from her first dreary years 
without her children, as is also "The Fever Dream," 
from which I have already quoted. "A Destiny" is 
another short narrative poem. These and a few 
graceful but incorrect sonnets make up nearly all 
that is new in the book, which was very favourably 
reviewed in the current number of the Quarterly for 
1840 by Hartley Coleridge, who names its author first 
of ten other British poetesses, all lost to memory now 
except Miss Barrett, who was placed second in the 
list. In this notice Mrs. Norton is given her famous 
title, "The Byron of Modern Poetesses." 

But she was not too overwhelmed by the honour to 
make a little fun of the fantastic form of the criticism, 
each authoress in the article of Mr. Coleridge being 
distinguished by a special flower — a rose, a violet, or 
a lily, etc., as the case might demand. 

The Honourable Mrs. Norton to John Murray 

24, Bolton Street, October 31, 1840. 
•' Dear Sir, 

" 1 ought to have thanked you from Ventnor, 
instead of waiting till my return to town, for "/ 
your kindness in sending me an early copy of the 
Quarterly^ containing all that comfortable flattery 
respecting 'The Dream.' I assure you I felt almost 
ashamed at seeing my name * first on the list called 
over,' but very grateful for the indulgent spirit in 
which the article was written, and would be glad to 
know to which of your Slaves of the Lamp 1 stand 
indebted. I was conscious of the egoism of the volume 
when I saw, collected into that form, the many scat- 
tered occasional pieces, added to the principal poem. 



176 "THE DREAM," ETC. [chap, xiv 

I hope to do better yet, and will carefully avoid any 
faults that have been pointed out. 

"As to * V.' (one of the list of poetesses), you have, 
of course, been made aware that she is since engaged 
to be married to Mr. C, a very handsome, agreeable, 
well-informed clergyman (as I hear). Now, as she is 
forty, nothing shall persuade me that the proposal 
and the marriage are not the result of the review. 
All the single ladies noticed in that article should 
instantly think of changing their names, retaining 
merely the floral name allotted to them in the 
Quarterly. I half wish 1 could change mine (especially 
since Mrs. Erskine Norton has ingeniously taken to 
playing at being me to all the publishers) ; but I dare 
say I should not change it to my satisfaction at this 
time of day, though I want ten years of 'V,,' and *V.' 
is very little and very lame, and has not (as I am 
credibly informed) nearly such a straight nose as I 
have. 

" Her poetry is wonderful ; I hardly believed it was 
a woman's at first. 

" If the author of the article knew Lady Emeline 
Wortley, he would be too much in love with her to 
be able to laugh at her. She is the truest, simplest 
woman that ever was bit by romance ; but you are 
an infidel, and don't believe in women because your 
Byron wrote some clever lines against the sex — yet 
how was so profligate a man to know good women ? 

" Not that I defend my lady's high-flown language 
and starry sublimities 'at all times'; but she is so 
gentle, and earnest, and real, that I feel a little un- 
happy when I read the review. Poisoned daggers are 
a joke to being laughed at in the Quarterly. 
" Believe me, dear sir, 

" Yours very truly obliged, 

" Caroline Norton." 



The book was very popular for a time. Its first 
edition was quickly exhausted ; a second followed 
with a characteristic preface interesting to Americans 
in its reference to the piratical customs of American 
publishers and editors before the days when Copyright 
in the United States was given to foreigners. 



1840] PREFACE TO AMERICAN EDITION 177 

" A compliment. has been lately paid me on the other 
side of the Atlantic, which I confess I have received 
very unwillingly. I allude to the printing of my pub- 
lished poem in an American paper, a huge mammoth, 
a very boa-constrictor of a paper, which has contrived 
to swallow it all. Now, anxious as I naturally am to 
become acquainted with, and popular among, my friends 
in ' the Far West,' yet, if it so pleased them, I could 
wish to be more formally introduced. 1 would fain not 
appear before Bryant's countrymen and fellow-citizens 
in such a very careless undress ; indeed, this sort of 
dealing is hard, both as respects author and publisher 
in England, etc. 

" Of a still more equivocal nature is the compliment 
(if compliment it can be called) of printing and pub- 
lishing poems as mine which are not from my pen, 
and of whose authorship I know nothing. These 
poems may be as good, or better than those which I 
am in the habit of writing, but they are not mine, and 
therefore I would rather they were not attributed to 
me. Moreover, the ' Melancholy Musings ' given to 
me by no means express my real sentiments. I am 
thankful to say that I still believe in ' Love ' and 
' Friendship ' quite as firmly as in the outset of my 
life ; and that far from taking that saucily high tone 
with the * meteor Fame,' and treating her with a sort 
of despairing contempt, I am reasonably anxious that 
what I write should be read and approved of; willing 
to take all pains to attain that desirable end ; and at 
this moment full of hope and interest respecting the 
success of this very volume, and the chance of my 
having, perhaps, to correct a third edition through the 
indulgence of my readers." 

She was not disappointed. The results of 'The 
Dream,' from a pecuniary point of view, must have 
been very satisfactory. She writes to Mrs. Shelley 
the same autumn : 

" In three weeks I am to set up the magnificence of 
a one-'orse shay myself, and then Fulham and the 
various streets of London, where friends and foes live, 
will become attainable ; at present I have never stirred 
over the threshold since 1 came up from Brighton." 

23 



178 "THE DREAM," ETC. [chap, xiv 

There were other things besides the one-'orse shay 
which made this year seem a kind of turning-point in 
her favour. She had not been received at Court since 
1835, when all three Sheridan sisters made their 
courtesy to Queen Adelaide at the Drawing-Room 
after their brother's elopement. But at one of the 
May Drawing-Rooms of 1840 she was permitted to 
enjoy this outward and visible sign of the complete 
social rehabilitation she had undergone during the 
years since her husband's repudiation of her. She 
was presented by her sister Lady Seymour, and we 
even know how she was dressed, if the Court Journal 
is correct in its account of her : " Isle of Wight lace 
over white satin, with flowers and lappets to cor- 
respond ; train of pale lilac Irish poplin, lined with 
white gros de Naples, and trimmed with lace ; head- 
dress wreaths of lilac flowers, with pearl piquets 
intermixed, and plumes of ostrich feathers." It was 
well her beauty was still the kind " a faire voir aux 
ambassadeurs " ; enough in itself to make a sort of 
triumph of this return to Court ; for there were 
enemies as well as friends in the reception she met 
there — great Tory ladies who continued to behave as 
if the verdict for Lord Melbourne had never been 
given. 

And she was frightened when she made her first 
courtesy to the young Queen, so evidently so that the 
Queen noticed it and spoke of it afterwards to her 
uncle and Mrs. Norton's old friend, Leopold, King of 
the Belgians, drawing from him the following cautious 
commendation in reply : 

" It was a very generous feeling which prompted 
you to see Mrs. Norton, and I have been too much her 
friend to find fault with it. 

" True it is that Norton was freely accepted by her, 
but she was very poor, and could, therefore, hardly 
venture to refuse him. Many people will flirt with a 
clever, handsome, but poor girl, though not marry 
her ; besides, the idea of having old Sherry for a 



1840-41] LORD MELBOURNE'S FALL FROM OFFICE 179 

grandfather had nothing very captivating. A very 
unpleasant husband Norton certainly was, and one 
who had little tact. 

" I can well believe that she was much frightened, 
having so many eyes on her, some of which, perhaps, 
not with the most amiable expression." 

Indeed, when we remember the Queen's usual atti- 
tude towards women who were unfortunate enough to 
have drawn the public attention upon any irregularity 
in their marriage relations, it must be inferred from 
her gracious reception of Mrs. Norton on this and 
many other occasions that she wished to be just to 
an injured woman, and believed her friendship with 
Lord Melbourne to have been innocent. 

But the Queen was about to lose Lord Melbourne 
by a natural reversal of the fate which had already 
deprived Mrs, Norton of the same society ; for in 
September 1841 the Whigs were driven from office, 
and Queen Victoria had to receive Sir Robert Peel in 
the place of her good old friend. She made no secret 
of her regret for her loss ; and Sir John Campbell, 
who had also lost office, shows all that melancholy 
satisfaction we so often feel in the contemplation of 
another person worse off than ourselves, in his 
prophecy as to Lord Melbourne's sentiments in the 
matter, 

" I called on Melbourne this morning between 
twelve and one. I found him shaving. This was 
his levee ; I said I came to offer my congratulations on 
his release from the cares of office, and that I hoped 
he was happy, 

" ' Oh ! very happy,' He smiled, but in such sort ! 
In truth he will feel it more than any of us. He not 
only loses the occupation and excitement of office, but 
his whole existence is changed. With him it is as if 
a man were to have his wife and children torn from 
him when he falls from power. He consorted con- 
stantly with the Queen on the most easy and delightful 
footing, and he is continually banished from her 



i8o "THE DREAM," ETC. [chap, xiv 

presence. I know not what will become of him. 
The shadow of the trees at Brocket will be very 
funereal." 

But in this, as in so many other of his judgments 
upon the men and motives of his time, Sir John 
Campbell seems to have been mistaken. As he 
acknowledges himself: 

" I yesterday met Melbourne at dinner at Lady 
Holland's. He was very gay, and I begin to think he 
will carry it off the best of us all." 

Charles Greville remarks further on the same 
subject : 

" As soon as he was out, he resumed his old habits : 
Holland House, Lady Palmerston ! There he loved 
to lounge and sprawl at his ease, pouring out a rough 
but original stream of talk, shrewd, playful, and 
instructive." 

And we have plenty of evidence that " Palazzo 
Boltoni," as Mrs. Norton sometimes amused herself 
by calling her new home with her uncle, was another 
of the homes where he was often and pleasantly found 
in these latter days. 

But hardly more than a year after his fall from 
office. Lord Melbourne had a slight stroke of paralysis, 
which prevented him for some months from appearing 
in public, 

"And when he again occupied his accustomed seat 
in the Lords, though his features were little altered 
and he could walk supported by his staff, slightly 
dragging one leg, there was no speculation in his 
eye ; sometimes when he spoke his voice was broken 
as if he had been going to burst into tears." ^ 

From that time on till his death there was a slow 
decay of both mind and body. He is described thus 
tenderly by one of his own family : 

' Lord John Campbell's " Autobiography. 



1841-2] DINNERS AT "PALAZZO BOLTONI" 181 

"A somewhat massive, though not corpulent figure 
reclining in an armchair, a white or nearly white head, 
shaggy eyebrows, and a singularly keen and kindly 
eye, fits of silence, occasionally broken by an incisive 
and rather paradoxical remark, accompanied by a 
genial laugh and a rubbing of the hands together. 
I remember also noticing how easily the tears came 
into his eyes, not so much, as I have heard it said, at 
anything tender or affecting as at the expression of a 
noble or generous sentiment : a shattered invalid, very 
little left of the exuberant vitality which has been 
noted as one of his marked characteristics." 

He was able to the end, however, to enjoy society, 
and was flattered and pleased when new men wanted 
to meet him. His old, yet new, relations with Mrs. 
Norton through this latter part of his life speak for 
themselves in the following extract from the diary of 
the actor Macready : 

" Mrs. Norton has sent a note inviting us to meet 
Lord Melbourne at her house to-morrow, as he wishes 
to speak with me about the theatre." 

August 22. 

" Dined with Mrs. Norton. Met Lady Conyngham, 
Lord Melbourne, Sidney Herbert, Kohl, and the 
Sheridans. Rogers came in the evening." 

These little dinners at *' Palazzo Boltoni " were 
sometimes more than mere social occasions. I speak 
of one, especially described by Fanny Kemble back in 
England in 1841, with her American husband, Mr. 
Butler, which Mrs. Norton had made the opportunity 
for — 

"A certain shy, silent, rather rustic gentleman from 
the far-away province of New Brunswick, Mr. Samuel 
Cunard, afterwards Sir Samuel Cunard, of the great 
mail-packet line of steamers between England and 
America. He had come to London an obscure and 
humble individual, endeavouring to procure from the 
Government the sole privilege of carrying the trans- 



i82 "THE DREAM," ETC. [chap, xiv 

Atlantic mails for his line of steamers. Fortunately 
for him, he had some acquaintance with Mrs. Norton, 
and the powerful beauty, who was kind-hearted and 
good-natured to all but her natural enemies {i.e. the 
members of her own London society), exerted all her 
interest with her admirers in high places in favour of 
Cunard, and had made this very dinner for the express 
purpose of bringing her provincial protege into pleasant 
personal relations with Lord Lansdowne and Lord 
Normanby, who were likely to be of great service to 
him in the special object which had brought him to 
England. The only other individual I remember at 
the dinner was that most beautiful person. Lady 
Harriet d'Orsay, 

** Years after, when the Halifax projector had become 
Sir Samuel Cunard, he reminded me of this charming 
dinner, in which Mrs. Norton had so successfully 
found the means of forwarding his interests, and 
spoke with enthusiasm of her kind-heartedness as well 
as her beauty and talents. He, of course, passed under 
the * Caudine Forks,' ^ beneath which all men en- 
countering her had to bow and throw down their 
arms." 

But such pleasant entertainments in Bolton Street 
had to suffer many sad interruptions. On July 20, 
1 841, while crossing by steamer to Ireland, the husband 
of Helen Sheridan, Lord Dufferin, died suddenly from 
the effects of an overdose of a sedative, his wife being 
still abroad, in delicate health, at Castellamare. 

In September of the following year came the fatal 
accident to little William Norton ; and just a year 
afterwards the news of the death of Frank Sheridan, 
treasurer of the British colony at Mauritius, of con- 
sumption ; followed in November of the same autumn 
by the death of Charles Sheridan the elder, almost as 
premature as those preceding it, for he was hardly 
fifty when he died — a very kind and courteous gentle- 
man and no mean scholar, though lacking in the 

^ Mrs. Kemble shows here her lack of a classical education. It 
was at the Caudine Pass, during the Samnite war, that the Roman 
army was made to " pass under the yoke." 



1841-s] DEATH OF CHARLES SHERIDAN 183 

brilliant qualities which have made other members of 
his race so remarkable. 

On his decease most of his moderate fortune went 
to his nephew and namesake Charles, at that time 
Secretary at the British Embassy in Paris ; and his 
niece, who owed so much of the comparative peace 
and security of her life since her separation from her 
husband to her uncle's generous protection, was again 
obliged to find a new home. 

There is an undated note from her to Mrs. Shelley, 
written probably the summer succeeding her uncle's 
death, and, if so, telling her first effort to find a new 
place of abode for herself after Bolton Street was 
given up. 

" I have moved myself bag and baggage to 16, Norfolk 
Street, Park Lane ; through the grating of my prison 
bars I drop this note, hoping some friendly passer-by 
will charitably carry it to its destination. Written 
this detestable smoking day of August at about a 
quarter to two p.m." 

But in July 1845 we find her finally settled at 
No. 3, Chesterfield Street, Mayfair, the little house 
which was to be her home in London for more than 
thirty years to come. It has been somewhat altered of 
late years, enlarged by another storey, its dull brick 
front somewhat diversified from the dead level of those 
many little London houses which lined the narrow 
streets of Mayfair during the thirties and forties. 
But it still stands, for those who like to go and 
look at it and please themselves with the thought 
that it is not so utterly changed as to prevent that 
good company which once gathered in its threadbare, 
much-encumbered little drawing-room, from finding 
their way back and making a shift to feel at home 
there, if some spell should ever bring them back from 
their graves. 

There is another of Mrs. Norton's letters to Mrs. 
Shelley, written, it is true, rather earlier than the date 



1 84 "THE DREAM," ETC. [chap, xiv 

of this new departure, but more appropriate here where 
it is the writer, not Mrs. Shelley, who is looking for a 
new domicile. 



" With respect to your house in Berkeley Street, 
I think it would be most childish to give up a good 
and cheap house because a ' fie-fie * had lived in it, 
which, I suppose, is the English of the 'associations.' 
My uncle says he never heard of such an objection ; 
but he is not the best person to ask. If it is any 
satisfaction to you to know that they thought to deter 
me from taking a house in Hereford Street by telling 
me there were two houses of that sort in the same 
street, and that I obstinately persisted in thinking the 
neighbourhood as good as when the houses do not 
acknowledge themselves (as in Grosvenor Square), 
you have that bright example before you. I really 
think these sort of objections absurd, and if you con- 
sider them otherwise, you will never get a small, cheap, 
and pretty house at the west end of the town, for such 
houses are the natural prey of such persons ; and ever 
and anon they hire them and put parrots' cages and 
geraniums into the balcony, which they paint green. 
But if you act discreetly and modestly, that is, if you 
paint the rails dark green and don't buy a parrot, and 
are contented with two geraniums inside the drawing- 
room, the barrenness of virtue will be apparent, and 
the house will be as good as if its face was built out of 
the sorrowful and remorseful bricks of the Millbank 
Penitentiary." 



But though her Irish blood was sure to go on 
dancing amid all the distractions and bereavements 
that were continually disturbing her life, she suffered 
none the less from these, in her health and in her 
work. Since 1841 she had been engaged on "The 
Child of the Islands," a longer, more ambitious poem 
than anything she had yet attempted. She herself 
explains in the preface of the volume, which appeared 
early in 1845, some of the causes which so long re- 
tarded its publication. 



1844-5] "THE CHILD OF THE ISLANDS" 185 

" Had 1 been able to carry out my original plan, the 
volume now published would have appeared on 
November 9, 1842, being the first anniversary of the 
birth of His Royal Highness. The recurrence of 
domestic affliction in two consecutive autumns com- 
pelled me to relinquish the literary tasks in which I 
was engaged ; and I abandoned all thoughts of pub- 
lishing at that particular time." 

It was still further delayed by an illness of her own 
in the late autumn of 1844, which kept her from finish- 
ing it until too late for the Christmas sales, as she 
ruefully remarks to her sister, Lady Seymour, who 
was spending that winter in Paris. 

She was always most eager to support and enlarge 
her early reputation for poetic genius — a word more 
freely used in those days than now. She had written 
to reproach her old friend Rogers for having spoken 
of her as the author of " Fugitive Pieces," signing 
herself " Yours dutifully, the author of * Fugitive 
Pieces.' Ah, little did I think you would have sacri- 
ficed me, your friend, for a * bon mot.' All night their 
paper ghosts have bowed to me, saying ' We are 
Fugitive Pieces ! We are Fugitive Pieces ! ' " 

Certainly after the production of " The Child of the 
Islands " no one could ever so designate her again. 
It was a very long poem in four parts — Spring, 
Summer, Autumn, and Winter — addressed to the 
Prince of Wales (to quote from her own preface), 
" as the most complete existing type of a peculiar 
class — a class born into the world of very various 
destinies, with all the certainty human prospects can 
give of enjoying the blessings of this life without 
incurring any of its privations. I selected the Prince 
of Wales as my illustration, because the innocence of 
his age, the hopes that hallow his birth, and the 
hereditary loyalty which clings to the throne, concur 
in enabling men of all parties, and of every grade of 
society, to contemplate such a type, not only without 
envy but with one common feeling of earnest good- 

24 



1 86 "THE DREAM," ETC. [chap, xiv 

will. Nor will the presence of this goodwill weaken 
the contrast or destroy the argument. It is, on the 
contrary, a gleam of that union and kindness of feeling 
between the higher and lower classes which it is the 
main object of the writer of these pages to inculcate — 
a gleam which may fade into darkness or brighten into 
sunshine, but which no one who attentively observes 
the present circumstances of this country can believe 
will remain unaltered." 

She sent the following letter to Rogers with a copy 
of the poem : 

" I send you a book, the book, my book ! I know 
you will not read it, but peep into it for the sake of 
the writer. 1 have marked two episodes — the death 
of a gipsy girl in prison and the description of a ballet 
dance. Don't lend it to anybody, because I depend on 
it for some bread and butter. 

*' P.S. — A friend of mine, interrupting me, declares 
that I have not marked the best passages, and has 
marked one of his own selecting ; you may play at 
pitch-and-toss to decide which you may read ; only 
remember * England expects every man will do some 
portion of his duty.* The last sentence written on a 
scroll flying from a mast." 

The book was warmly reviewed in the Edinburgh 
Review for July, by her personal friend, Abraham 
Hayward, who begins by calling it "great poetry, true 
poetry ! " Great poetry it was not. Hardly poetry 
at all, if we judge it by the standard of works that 
immediately preceded and followed it : " In Memoriam," 
"Sordello," "The Strayed Reveller," etc. And yet 
we must concede to it something more than mere 
rhymed facility, something as real and beautiful as 
herself — that very mortal beauty, never to be denied, 
even by those who deny her immortality. 

Taken at this human valuation, there will always be 
a great deal of charm and interest in " The Child of the 
Islands," a great deal of the quality of the author, in 
fact — her frank, generous nature, her hatred of sham, 



1845] GEORGE NORTON'S KINDNESS TO THE POOR 187 

her audacity — not so much of thought as of fidelity 
to her own impressions — impressions almost always 
fresh-coined from her own experience. For in all 
that long poem there is hardly a description, or an 
incident, or an analogy which cannot be traced back 
directly to something her eyes had seen, her ears had 
heard, or her heart felt. 

The one pleasant thing we know about George 
Norton is her reference to him in a note appended to 
a certain passage to prove that the pathetic incident 
therein narrated was founded on an actual fact. After 
the death of his little boy in 1842, when he had asked 
his wife and she had refused to come back to him, 
he had fallen back into quasi-friendly relations with 
her, making her occasional visits at her uncle's house 
and afterwards at her own ; and in that partial renewal 
of familiar intercourse he evidently had talked to her 
about his experiences in the Whitechapel division of 
the police magistracy, to which he had some time been 
transferred from Lambeth, where the wretchedness of 
the poor people seems to have impressed him with 
pity. In fact, the first case which made the public 
aware of the miserable wages of poor sewing-women 
came up and received notice in his division. Another 
of his experiences on the Bench is also given by his 
wife. 

The captain of a merchant vessel, who was brought 
before Mr. Norton for attempting to commit suicide, 
after a long struggle with adverse fortune, was 
relieved from the poor-box ; and some encouraging 
advice was given him by the magistrate. Three or 
four years afterwards he returned with the amount, 
and stated that he had begun again as a sailor before 
the mast, and had again become master. He said the 
magistrate had "put a new heart into him." 

The following passage is chosen, one of many, as 
an example of the graceful, tender sentiment which 
shows her poetry at its best, and which is often at its 
best in this long poem : 



i "THE DREAM," ETC. [chap, xiv 

" On how many graves 

Rests at this hour their first cold winter's snow ? 

Wild o'er the earth the sleety tempest raves ; 

Silent our lost ones slumber on below, 

Never to share again the genial glow 

Of Christmas gladness round the circled hearth ; 

Never returning festivals to know. 

Or holidays that mark some loved one's birth, 

Or children's joyous songs, and loud, delighted mirth. 

"The frozen tombs are sheeted with one pall, 
One shroud for every churchyard, crisp and bright, 
One foldless mantle, softly covering all 
With its unwrinkled width of spotless white. 
There, through the grey dim day and starlit night, 
It rests on rich and poor, and young and old, 
Veiling dear eyes, whose warm home-cheering light 
Our pining hearts can never more behold. 
With an unlifting veil, that falleth blank and cold. 

" And there rests one, whom none on earth remember 
Except that heart whose fond life fed its own : 
The cherished babe, who through this bleak December, 
Far from the mother's bosom lieth lone, 
Where the cold north wind makes its wintry moan. 
A bird whose song beyond the cloud is gone ; 
A child whose empty cradle is bedewed 
By bitter falling tears in hours of solitude. 

" Ah, how can death untwist the chord of love. 
Which bid those parted lives together cling ? 
Prest to the bosom of that brooding dove, 
Into those infant eyes would softly spring 
A sense of happiness and cherishing ; 
The tender lips knew no completed word, 
The small feet could not run for tottering. 
But a glad silent smile the red mouth stirred. 
And murmurs of delight whene'er her name was heard. 

" Oh ! darling, since all life for death is moulded, 
And every cradled head some tomb must fill, 
A little sooner only hast thou folded 
Thy helpless hands, that struggled and are still : 
A little sooner, thy Creator's will 
Hath called thee to the life that shall endure : 
And in that heaven, His gathered saints shall fill. 
Hath made thy calling and election sure. 
His work in thee being done, was thy death premature?" 



1846-9] THE DRAWING-ROOM SCRAP BOOK 189 

Immediately after the appearance of ** The Child of 
the Islands," Mrs. Norton became editor of Fisher's 
Drawing-room Scrap-book one of the last survivals 
of the annuals of her youth, but differing thus much 
from the English Aitnual and the Keepsake^ of which 
she had also been editor, that in this later 
publication the editor was also supposed to be the 
sole contributor. The years of 1846, '47, '48, and '49 of 
the Scrap-book, form, therefore, a sort of collection 
of her own poetry, profusely and beautifully illus- 
trated by steel engravings, reproductions of famous 
pictures, or country seats, or beauties, the engravings, 
however, being arbitrarily furnished by the publishers 
who happened to be backing the enterprise, the poetry 
to be added as appropriately as possible. 

One may imagine that poetry called into being by 
such very formal suggestion could not always be of a 
very high grade— must often have hardly been poetry 
at all ; yet perhaps these very conditions best fitted 
the discursive fluency, the picturesque imagination 
of Mrs. Norton's verse ; certainly, the most beautiful, 
as well as the least known, of Mrs. Norton's shorter 
pieces are found in this collection. 

She must have written with great facility, for these 
four volumes are by no means the sum of her literary 
activity during these four years. Besides several 
collections of songs, both words and music, published 
by Chappell, one is constantly coming across short 
stories by her in the current magazines — of very 
uneven merit, indeed, but none without some touch 
of her natural charm. 

And any account of her at this time would be incom- 
plete without some mention of her interest in the 
hopes and apprehensions which were invading all 
Europe as the great revolutionary outbreak of 1848 
approached nearer and nearer. During the Chartist 
disturbances of 1848 her "Letters to the Mob" ap- 
peared successively in the Morning Chronicle, a Peelite 
paper owned by Sidney Herbert and the Duke of 



190 "THE DREAM," ETC. [chap, xiv 

Newcastle. They were afterwards collected and 
published in a little tract, very rare to-day, but well 
worth reading, if only to remind one of a side in 
her too often forgotten in the estimate of her attraction 
for every clever man who came anywhere near her. 

Another interest in her writings on these subjects is 
the constant proof they give of a type of mind quite 
other than that which one would naturally attribute to 
a woman of her reputation, a mind ardent and humane, 
appealed to by all generous and noble impulses, but 
practical rather than speculative, appreciative rather 
than imaginative, eminently reasonable, with a 
kind of constructive good sense — which makes one 
wonder whether if she had been a man she would not 
have made a greater mark on her generation as a 
political leader than she did as a woman and a poet. 



CHAPTER XV 

NEW FRIENDS — KINGLAKE — THE DUFF GORDONS — SIDNEY 
HERBERT — THE REPEAL OF THE CORN LAWS — 
RELATIONS WITH HER CHILDREN 

Caroline Norton was not thirty-seven when she 
went to live alone in Chesterfield Street. Beautiful, 
impulsive, and unconventional, it was impossible she 
should not have drawn down upon herself some 
portion of that blame which is so easily expended 
upon a woman separated from her husband, who still 
desires to please, and has a natural liking for men's 
society. Some of the gossip talked about her was, no 
doubt, quite groundless ; though for some it is possible 
that she herself gave occasion if not actual material. 

It would have been strange indeed if she had not 
sometimes grown restive under the endless pro- 
hibitions of her lot, that woman's divorce of which she 
was one day to speak so bitterly : 

"Alone. Married to a man's name, but never to 
know the protection of this nominal husband, nor the 
joys of family, nor the every-day companionship of a 
real home. Never to feel or show preference for any 
friend not of her own sex, though tempted, perhaps, 
by a feeling nobler than passion — gratitude lor 
generous pity, that has lightened the dreary days. 
To be slandered, tormented, insulted ; to find the 
world and the world's law utterly indifferent to her 
wrongs or her husband's sin ; and through all this to 
lead a chaste, unspotted, patient, cheerful life ; without 

191 



192 NEW FRIENDS [chap, xv 

anger, without bitterness, and with meek respect for 
those edicts which, with a perverse parody on Scripture, 
pronounce that it ' is not good for man to be alone,' 
but extremely good for woman." 

Perhaps it was as well that she was so scourged 
with adversity during those first years of her solitary 
existence and that she had to work so hard — ex- 
hausting mental work, often the merest drudgery, but 
often, too, that most exciting and absorbing occupation 
of literary creation, which raises one, for the moment 
at least, to a different plane — a higher plane, perhaps, 
than that of mere desire. 

The winter immediately after her uncle's death 
would have been, perhaps, the loneliest she ever spent, 
if she had not had this work. During all this period 
she was especially busy upon her poem, " The Child of 
the Islands," and, at least during their holidays, she 
had her children. But besides her more permanent 
losses, she was at this time separated from both Lady 
Seymour and Lady Dufferin, who were spending that 
year in Paris, and Mrs. Sheridan with them. 

She writes to Lord Melbourne from St. Leonards-on- 
Sea, in November 1844, to urge, as usual, somebody 
else's claim to be helped : 

" How can you turn such a deaf ear and such a 
turned-up nose to the claims of old Jack Morris ? 
Why don't you help the man who helped your brother 
at Westminster, in the good old days when you weren't 
weak and sick and he wasn't faint and starving ? Do 
you think the God who made Jack Morris and you 
does not judge it for selfishness, something also, 
perhaps, of ingratitude? For, no doubt, when he had 
his riches, and his twenty-stall stable, and his West- 
minster votes, very civil words you all said to him. 
Oh, rouse your sluggish old heart to write to some one 
for him ; and don't fly in the face of Heaven, who 
built up your face into the picture of honesty and 
generosity, thereby (alas !) creating much mistaken 
trust and vain expectation in the hearts of all those 
whose ill-judging eyes have gazed on your countenance. 



1844] LETTERS TO LORD MELBOURNE 193 

" Why don't you write ? Who have you got at 
Brocket? Does Emily ^ hang her long gowns up, like 
banners of victory, in the cupboards ? Does Lady 
Holland cut herself in four to help and serve you? 
Are Fanny Jocelyn's^ soft purple eyes at your table 
under the lamps? Or does the Minny^ who rivals 
our own Georgy, rouse you to any love and admira- 
tion of your own relations ? 

" Adieu. I am extremely busy, yet I write to you. 
You are not busy, yet you do not write to me. I 
abjure the world, and will sell all I have and give 
to the poor. To-morrow is Brin's birthday, and we 
have ordered roast pig for dinner." 

Another note to Lord Melbourne, written three 
weeks later, is as follows : 

" Pray do write. I am ill in bed myself, and if you 
don't write I shall think you are ill in bed too. I did 
imagine I had coaxed you into scribbling by asking 
you that information for my poem [" The Child of the 
Islands "]. You always say you are glad to teach me 
things and supply me with scraps of knowledge. How 
shall I get on if 1 am so neglected by my tutor ? 

" The boys' tutor, whose name is Mr. Murray, and 
who is curate, is the first gentleman of Scotch extrac- 
tion I ever met who knew nothing whatever about his 
clan or his family. In general they will ferret you out 
their roots (to say nothing of their branches) with the 
sagacity of trufQe-dogs ; but here is a fellow who asks 
what Dunmore's title is, and who is the elder branch 
of the Murray clan. 

" There is a passage in my poem about the Church 
disturbances in Scotland, agamst those who want to 
elect their own ministers. Breadalbane wanted me to 
leave it out, but I have been obstinate. I told him 
what you had said about the difference between being 
in and out of office. He laughed very much, and said 
he should send you a whole deer to make up," 

The illness she speaks of was serious enough to put 

' Lady Ashley's daughter. 

2 Lady Fanny Cowper. 

3 Lady Ashley, Lady Palmerston's eldest daughter. 

25 



194 KINGLAKE [chap, xv 

off her new book till after the Christmas sales, but we 
hear of her late in January at a dinner in the shadowy 
dining-room of the poet Rogers, the only woman 
invited to meet seven men, among whom were Alfred 
Tennyson and Crabb Robinson and Moxon the 
publisher; arriving, as was too often her custom, 
very late, but very agreeable, quite able to hold her 
own in that society of poets and publishers. 

And there were other dinners that winter in 
Hayward's old chambers in the Temple, and gatherings 
afterwards in the room, "stern with yellowish law- 
books," that stood in the place of a drawing-room. 

And an evening in her own house was made 
memorable by the discussion which raged between 
Lockhart and Hayward as to the standing of literary 
men in London society, where feeling ran so high that 
it had to be assuaged next day by a shower of notes, 
notably one from herself to her sharp-tempered little 
friend. 

^^ March 6, 1844. 

" Sulky, Black-hearted Avocat, 

" I have partially recovered from my amazement 
that you should say such unjust and bitter things 
about my want of generosity, etc. If this is a Queen 
Bee you had better say so, and I will go and call and 
coax her, and we will sit together (as much as she will 
permit), and ask her here. If you were as gentle as 
your friend Kinglake you would have understood 
better what we all said, and what Lockhart especially 
meant, and all that I supported of what he said, which 
you call going against you. You don't deserve to be 
written to, and I only do it because you are my 
Avocat. I say again, if you have not persuaded her 
we burnt her in effigy (for you are a gossip), I will 
go and see the large brown eyes that, like the eyes of 
all people of imperfect hearing, have so much plaintive 
listening in their expression. 

" Yours, etc., 

"C. Client." 

Kinglake, the future historian of the Crimean War, 



1844-5] NEW FRIENDS 195 

was then just beginning to be known in London 
society as a clever young barrister who had journeyed 
extensively in the East and narrated his adventures 
in a peculiarly delightful book of travels, " Eothen." 
He was one of the new men by whom the circle in 
Chesterfield Street was constantly enlarging itself. 
And it is he, a little later, whom we hear of as host, 
inviting people to eat whitebait at Greenwich and 
meet Mrs. Norton, Sir Alexander and Lady Duff 
Gordon, and Sidney Herbert. One of the guests, 
the Rev. Mr. Brookfield, the husband of Thackeray's 
friend, writes thus about it to his wife : 

" I should have gone to a dead certainty, and King- 
lake vows that there was nothing to hinder you going 
(for I expressed my doubts), or nothing would have 
induced him to ask you (which of course he would 
not), that she visits everywhere, and he himself believes 
nothing against her. Perhaps she would be described 
as decidedly pretty, with a Somerset nose ; a nice 
person, very unaffected, and a shade free-and-easy, 
but it seems only the overflowing of an open 
disposition." 

One sees from this letter that the old slanders were 
not even then so entirely appeased that they did not 
need a special refutation for each new acquaintance, 
whenever the widening circle of her interests carried 
her out beyond the small class in which she was born. 

The Duff Gordons were also new acquaintances of 
that summer, soon to grow into old friends ; indeed, 
one can think of no two women better fitted for that 
relation than Lucie Austin and Caroline Norton, both 
so beautiful, so richly endowed, so free from all petty 
shams and conventions, both shadowed by a tragic 
fate. 

But all these new interests never seem to have inter- 
fered with the old ones. Indeed, it was part of her 
social instinct to sweep them all along together. For 
instance, we find the Duff Gordons and Henry Reeve 



196 THE DUFF GORDONS [chap, xv 

and Mrs, Norton all in a box together with Lord 
Melbourne at St. James's Theatre in November of 
that same year, to see the first representation of Ben 
Jonson's play Every Man in His Humour, acted 
by some of the writers for Punch and other literary 
men of the time, notably Charles Dickens. We are 
told that Lord Melbourne found the play very poor, 
with no fivOo'? in it — that was his expression ; till 
suddenly between the acts he exclaimed in a stentorian 
voice heard across the pit, " I knew this play would be 
dull, but that it would be so damnably dull as this I 
did not suppose," 

There is a letter of Mrs. Norton, written this same 
November to Panizzi, the great librarian of the British 
Museum, showing her at her old task of providing 
amusement of the kind he liked best for this same old 
friend, the ex-Prime Minister : 

"Chesterfield Street, 

'"''Friday evetiing^ November 1845. 

" Dear Mr, Panizzi, 

" I met Lord Melbourne at dinner to-day, and 
mentioned to him having seen you and Mr. Thackeray. 
He begged me to write for him, to ask you if you 
would dine with him on Monday, and Mr. Thackeray 
also. He has asked the Duff Gordons and Mr. Fon- 
blanque for that day. Will you let me know as soon 
as convenient, and will you, who are an old friend of 
Lord Melbourne's, explain anything that may seem 
odd or blunt in his mode of inviting without intro- 
duction, though indeed he persists very obstinately 
that Mr. Thackeray is a clergyman, with whom he is, 
or ought to be, acquainted. 1 said I did not think it 
clerical to write about the Bishop of Bullochesmithy, 
and that I did not think Mr. Thackeray was a clergy- 
man at all ; but this is not of importance in comparison 
of his coming to dinner at half-past seven, punctual, 
on Monday, 

" 1 wish you would now and then call on Lord 
Melbourne, as, since he is invalided, he takes great 
pleasure in receiving his friends. I think about four 
o'clock, or a little later, when there is no House of 



1 845] THE CORN LAWS 197 

Lords, is a good moment to find him. Poor Lady 
Holland's death has deprived him of a very near 
neighbour, where he could be, without fatigue or form, 
in pleasant society, and, with all her faults, she had 
certainly a very real regard for him. 
" Believe me, dear Mr. Panizzi, 

" Yours sincerely, 

*' Caroline Norton." 

Another name often to be met in any account of 
Mrs. Norton at this time is that of Sidney Herbert, 
second son of the Earl of Pembroke by his Russian 
wife, Catherine Woronzow — a man about thirty-seven, 
rather young to be a Cabinet Minister, whose high 
responsibilities, however, did not interfere with his 
gaiety and charm of temper, or the impulses of a 
heart most easily touched by suffering in any form — 
a man among whose natural gifts was beauty so 
gallant, so distinguished, that it might well have de- 
scended upon him from that great hero of his race, 
Sir Philip Sidney. 

London was especially full that autumn of 1845. 
The failure of the potato crop in the preceding summer 
had renewed the question of the Corn Laws, which 
the party in power had come in pledged to preserve. 
Sir Robert Peel, however, was already suspected of 
as great a change of mind on this important party 
question as he had already undergone in the matter 
of Catholic Emancipation in 1829 — for which earlier 
inconsistency, by the way, Tories of longest memories 
had never quite forgiven him. But the Protectionists 
were by no means confined to the Tory party. 

Lord Melbourne was bitter against repeal, and deeply 
prejudiced against the Prime Minister, and so were 
the greater part of the Whig landed interest. It was 
generally known that all the Cabinet Ministers had 
been in town ever since the beginning of November, 
holding almost daily meetings ; and all the world, 
both Whig and Tory, was eager to know the subject 
of their deliberations, which were carefully kept con- 



198 THE REPEAL OF THE CORN LAWS [chap, xv 

cealed, till the tension was suddenly broken by Delane, 
editor of the Times, in his famous leading article of 
December 4, announcing confidently that the Cabinet 
was agreed to repeal the Corn Laws ; that Parliament 
was to be immediately convened for that purpose. 

Instantly the rumour rushed into circulation that 
some one had betrayed a Government secret. Nothing, 
however, was further from the truth. 

For many years the Times had been, if not a 
Government organ, at least a very correct medium of 
Government information, through the relation of its 
editors — Thomas Barnes, and, on his death, of his 
successor, John Thaddeus Delane — with persons high 
in office. In the time of the Whigs, Lord Brougham 
had sometimes furnished this official information ; in 
Delane's case it was Lord Aberdeen, Foreign Secretary 
in the Cabinet of Sir Robert Peel. Henry Reeve, 
best known to us now as the editor of the " Greville 
Memoirs," was also on the staff of the Times in 1845, 
I quote from Reeve's journal on the subject of the 
famous leading article of December 4 : 

"Early in December Peel announced to his colleagues 
his intention to repeal the Corn Laws. Lord Aberdeen 
told Delane of this on December 3, and on December 4 
the Times published it. The agitation was extreme, 
and Peel resigned on the 6th, but soon came back 
again." 

We may also go to Mr. Reeve's article on George 
Meredith's novels in the Edinburgh Review of January 
1895 to be assured that the incident where Diana sells 
a Government secret is " in no way founded on fact, 
nor even suggested by facts, but by calumnies which 
were exposed and refuted, though for a time they 
obtained circulation and a certain credence." 

The statement is further emphasised by Mr. Reeve 
in the same article : 

" We observe with regret that the late Sir William 



1845-6] DIANA OF THE CROSSWAYS 199 

Gregory, in his interesting autobiography, has revived 
a calumnious and unfounded anecdote, to which Mr. 
Meredith had previously given circulation in this 
novel. We are enabled to state, and we do state, 
from our personal knowledge, that the story is abso- 
lutely false in every particular, and that the persons 
thus offensively referred to had nothing to do with 
the matter. The intention of the Government to 
propose the repeal of the Corn Laws was communi- 
cated openly by Lord Aberdeen to Mr. Delane, the 
editor of the Times ; there was no sort of intrigue or 
bribery in the transaction." 

And, indeed, it seems impossible that it should ever 
have been believed by any one in close relations with 
Mrs. Norton. 

There have been things equally unkind, unjust, 
untrue, reported in the past against her, but none, it 
seems to me, more utterly at variance with what she 
really was than this last story. Signally impulsive 
and indiscreet in her own affairs, one can conceive of 
no more unfit person than she as the repository for 
an important political secret, though with her proud 
spirit and generous temper, trained and fortified as it 
was by intimate association with such men as Lord 
Melbourne and Sir James Graham, and her own 
brother-in-law. Lord Seymour, it is not only unlikely, 
but impossible, that she could have made so base a use 
of it as George Meredith excuses in the story of a 
woman in some ways resembling her. 

Nor is she the kind of woman to suffer slanderous 
attacks upon her reputation without some effort to 
justify herself. She has left, however, no word or 
sign to show that this particular report ever came near 
enough to hurt her. On the contrary, we find her 
writing to Lord Melbourne early in 1846, with a mind 
so free from more painful preoccupations that she can 
afford to get very angry with her old friend for mis- 
understanding a suggestion of hers about some plans 
which were just then occupying his leisure. 



200 THE REPEAL OF THE CORN LAWS [chap, xv 

" Thursday^ January 22. 

" I am glad the interest in your gates made 3^ou 
write directly, but you disturbed yourself unneces- 
sarily ; I have no enthusiasms which make me forget 
what you say to me, and you told me at the time all 
that you have taken the trouble to write per post. If 
you had read as carefully as I listen, you would have 
seen that in my letter I mention having promised 
designs, and that I merely repeat the observations of 
others when I talk of Baldock and his triumphant 
entries. It has since struck me that as the place is 
in fact Mrs. Lamb's (and probably also the projected 
improvements), her leisure would be well employed 
and her taste better satisfied by choosing them herself." 

Having thus relieved her feelings, she goes on to a 
light-spirited arraignment of the attitude of her sex on 
the burning question of the day. 

" Mrs. ' S.' does not care about politics for the best 
of all reasons, which is, that she cannot by any effort 
be brought to comprehend them, even in the shallow 
way we women do. She takes them as Helen [Lady 
Dufferin] does, only that Helen could understand 
them. Nell's way I will recount. 

" Helen was ill in bed ; I thought Blank's epistle 
might amuse her, and took it accordingly. She put 
out one hand in a languid, deprecating manner, and 
said : ' Don't look so eager, Caroline ; and, above all 
things, don't read it to me if there are any politics in 
it, for I know I shall be bored and tired to death.' 

" As to S., you are wrong if you think him stupid. 
He may be wrong-headed, but he is a fine-spirited 
creature, full of information, though habitually silent ; 
and those who are against you may well be with you. 
Mrs. S. has a number of set phrases of the 'jobbing' 
of the Whigs and the ' dishonesty of the Whigs,' etc., 
but neither for the past nor for the present has she a 
definite idea." 



We catch just a glimpse of her a little later in the 
year from Lord Malmesbury's Diary : 



1846] SIDNEY HERBERT 201 

''March 1846. 
" We took a box at the Opera with Lady Seymour, 
and went afterwards to Lady Palmerston's. Mr. 
Sidney Herbert was there, and came up to me in a 
great state of excitement, saying that my conduct in 
leaving Peel was unworthy a gentleman, that the 
whole Protectionist party were a set of fools, and 
Lord S. the greatest fool among us ; and that Peel 
was delighted at having got rid of us. In short, he 
said everything that was obnoxious. If he had not 
been in such a frantic passion, I should probably not 
have been able to keep my temper, but there was 
something so absurd in his unprovoked attack that 
I retained perfect command over myself. It was cer- 
tainly very extraordinary, as I had not spoken to him 
that evening, or seen him since he came to London, 
and had given him no provocation whatever. He is 
generally careful of what he says ; in fact, he carries 
caution to that degree that he is famous for it. We 
met again at the tea-table that evening, when Mrs. 
Norton joined us, and by that time Mr. Herbert had 
recovered his good temper." 

Even at this late day we recognise the old Sheridan 
habit of drifting together into one group in their own 
and other people's houses, and their old readiness for 
admiring each other's social qualities. Between 1845 
and 1848 Lady Dufferin was also settled in London at 
29, Lower Brook Street, where her son was still at 
school and college. 

" There is nothing like her," says Caroline in a letter 
to a mutual friend. " I mean as to agreeability, for I 
hold myself quite as valuable a companion in the long 
run ; but I don't think I am fit to whisk the dust off 
her satin slipper in general society." 

And the eldest brother, Brinsley, also made another 
Sheridan centre in the house in Grosvenor Square, 
which his wife would have been the last person in the 
world to speak of as belonging to her rather than to 
her husband. There is a pretty little glimpse of them 

26 



202 RELATIONS WITH HER CHILDREN [chap, xv 

all, given in Sir Henry Taylor's Correspondence, 
where Mrs. Brinsley is especially noticed : 

" I thought her very pretty. They say her beauty 
has come to her since her marriage, and that it is 
owing to her connection with the Sheridans. Her 
eyes are really very fine when one comes to look 
into them." 

A long letter of Mrs. Norton's, written to her 
mother in the late winter of 1846, with the heading, 
" Let Marcia read this to you," is another proof of 
the affectionate intimacy which united all the members 
of the connection at this time : 

" Dearest Mother, 

" I am very glad indeed to think poor Charlie 
is out of his illness ; and now he has the spring and 
summer all before him to get well in, I hope he will 
pick up flesh and strength. The last two days these 
lovely little drawing-rooms have been full of sunshine, 
so I hope even in the country there is fine weather. 

" My lads left me yesterday evening, so that here is 
my first leisure day, and the first day for some weeks 
the Times newspaper has no spell in the column of 
'Exhibitions' and 'Holiday Amusements.'" 

The rest of the letter shows some of the difficulties 
which continued to confront her in her relations with 
her children, of whom the elder, at least, was rapidly 
growing from a boy into a man. 

"They are not to be with me next holidays, or a 
very small portion, as the young Baronet, Sir Robert 
Menzies [their cousin], is to be married in June to a 
pretty girl. . . . He goes to Italy immediately after 
his marriage, to remain some time. 

" Meanwhile, he writes and invites the boys to come 
and 'jubilatify' for a month in the Highlands, im- 
mediately on his marriage ; and, of course, it is all 
fair, though I regret not seeing them, and feel some 
anxiety about Fletcher, to whom they all behave in a 
manner that would amaze you, if you consider how 



1846] LETTER TO HER MOTHER 203 

little consequence, after all, he ever can assume, and 
what a good life Norton's is. I know it amazes me, 
and has been more or less a worry to me these holi- 
days, as James Norton [one of his uncles] is perpetu- 
ally endeavouring to ' keep him in sight.' He gets 
him down for a day or two to his place, overwhelms 
him with civilities, loads him on his return with home- 
made bread, asparagus, and other things for me, and 
speaks of me with respectful regret as being so unjustly 
acharnee against him. He also takes him out morning 
and evening in town, sometimes leaving him to finish 
his walk alone, which fidgets me and provokes me, 
because I have sometimes sate till four or five in the 
afternoon, expecting him back every minute, and not 
knowing whether to go out or not ; and the day I 
expected him back from the country he remained 
where he was, on invitation, without his father, con- 
trary to my agreement with Norton, which is, that 
they shall not visit his family from my house except 
with him. 

** Nothing, meanwhile, can be kinder, more tender, 
or more sweet-tempered than Fletcher is to me, even 
in little matters. Last night he sent the servant for 
cigars ; I scolded, but thought no more of it than as 
a petty vexation : after he was gone, I found on my 
table, directed to me, the parcel of tobacco I would 
not take from him. I have nothing to complain of, but 
he is evidently and naturally won by the great atten- 
tion paid him by his father's people. His abilities 
are evidently very good, and he did in two days the 
task that was given to occupy him for the holidays ; 
' more's the pity,' thought I, ' to do it so easily and so 
carelessly.' 

" Brinny has, I think, made a great start in mind 
and character ; and there is a sturdy earnestness and 
unselfishness about him very lovable. I do not know 
how many uncomfortable mothers have applied to 
their own sons the beautiful passage put into Queen 
Constance's mouth by Shakespeare, when speaking of 
her Arthur; but certainly, except the gift of beauty, 
which is, after all, only a temptation, I think no 
woman ever had a more hopeful son than my Brin in 
everything that nature can bestow. Lately, on the 
matters I have been scribbhng about, he talked to 



204' RELATIONS WITH HER CHILDREN [chap, xv 

me as any grown man might have done, and in the 
language of a grown person. It was when I had 
waited one day, and I could not help saying at last, 
' Dear me, Brin ; it will be a great vexation to me if 
I am to be made a second object in Fletcher's mind to 
James and your father's relations.' I wish you could 
have heard Brin, who spoke for eight or ten minutes 
really in the prepared manner of a man. He said he 
' had observed ' that I had been annoyed several times, 
but did not like to broach the subject to me ; that he 
was sure Fletcher loved me as well as he did himself, 
and preferred my company to that of any human being, 
but that he was, as he considered, ' an awfully weak 
fellow,' and ashamed to refuse an invitation, or seem 
under control ; that he was a boy in my house, and 
treated as a man elsewhere, which was a temptation 
to him, and a temptation that would cease when he 
was really a man. 

" He added as to the people I naturally disliked ; but 
here I will give you his own exact expressions. 

"'As to those people, mother, I don't think you 
need be so alarmed about him ; for all they say to him 
is always to defend and excuse themselves about you, 
and to assure him they do not think ill of you, some- 
times that they never did think ill of you, sometimes 
that they now are convinced they were mistaken. 
That cannot lower you to him, I think it does good ; 
you are never abused to us now. For myself, I draw 
the line. The lawyers and people of that sort — Kelly, 
Fladgate — who come to my father's house, I bow to. 
If they notice me, I show by my manner that I do 
not wish to be noticed by them. I never talk or laugh 
with them. ... I always come back punctually to you 
the day or hour you expect us ; I am not ashamed to 

five it as my reason, and my only one, for leaving, 
have now and then asked Fletcher to be spokesman. 
I don't like having it always to say, because it makes 
me appear less fond of my father and his company 
than Fletcher, but I do it because it must be done.' 

"Afterwards, when I said till he was older he could 
not comprehend all the bitterness I must feel to James 
and those who helped Norton, he said earnestly : * Not 
the exact case perhaps, mother ; but oh, 1 can under- 
stand the misery of any disgrace.'" 



1846] LETTER TO HER MOTHER 205 

She goes on to talk about her new engagements with 
the proprietor of the Drawing-room Scrap-book : 

" Fisher von der Scrap-book wants to engage me 
also for a prose Christmas book. Like the old woman 
who said she had many blessings, but Heaven took it 
out of her in corns, he has been liberal, but takes it 
out of me in time ; as he requires my undivided atten- 
tion to my duties, both for writing and the engravings, 
and to sit for my own picture an hour a day, and to 
be painted in miniature on marble — a surface which is 
delicate, but colder, I think, than ivory." 

The letter concludes with an absurd account of some 
of her housekeeping difficulties : 

** I am deeply immersed in those red account books 
which take up so much of Georgia's time when she 
leaves town, my cook being about to leave me. She 
is a worthy and intelligent cook, but loves not to clean 
my dining-room, and is a most sulky pig and full of 
dignity; insomuch that a former fat cook of mine, 
having sent to say she was dying and hoped I would 
assist her, she would not give the message to me 
because the petitioner had asked not for her but for 
Childe's wife [the wife of Mrs. Norton's coachman], 
whereupon the fat cook died unassisted. Now it hap- 
pened that I was fond of that fat cook (a most good- 
natured old soul, who walked back two hot miles, 
when she left me, because she had forgotten to say 
how the racoon was to be fed, that I used to keep). 
I therefore pronounced a * commination ' on the hard- 
hearted present cook, and ' hoped she would die in the 
workhouse, and send a message in vain to some, one 
on whom she depended for assistance.' She showed a 
most flouncing dignity and no feeling at all, and alto- 
gether we could not love each other any more." 



CHAPTER XVI 

NEW QUARREL WITH HER HUSBAND — FLETCHEr's ILLNESS — 
DEATH OF LORD MELBOURNE 

The spring of 1847 brought new bereavement to the 
Sheridan family, when the youngest brother, Charles, 
on whose recovery from illness Mrs. Norton had so 
earnestly congratulated her mother, died of consump- 
tion at the hotel of the British Embassy in Paris, 
where he had for some time held the position of 
Secretary of Legation. 

His nephew, Lord Dufferin, tells us : 

" He was perhaps the handsomest of all the Sheridan 
men, and an enchanting companion. Even when already 
enfeebled by the fell disease which destroyed his father 
and beautiful grandmother, I remember him sitting in 
one of the drawing-rooms of the Embassy when a ball 
was going on, surrounded by a circle of men and 
ladies, kept away from the dancing by his sallies." 

His death in the thirtieth year of his age was a grief 
to all that were left of that beautiful group of brothers 
and sisters, and must have come as a sort of conclusion 
to the gay story of their youth. 

As a frontispiece to Fishet^s Scrap-book for 1848, 
we find Mrs. Norton's portrait, a line engraving by 
Ross, which represents her full-face, with a strange 
immobility of expression which never could have been 
really like her. Yet in many ways it seems the most 

206 



1847] FLETCHER NORTON 207 

satisfactory of her many likenesses ; the most tragic 
and yet the most noble. The eyes are wonderful, deep 
pools of almost brooding sadness. The mouth, with 
its short upper lip, and full, drooping curves, is very 
sweet. A frame of dark smooth hair, with the charac- 
teristic little velvet band across her forehead, adds to 
the severity of the outlines. A beautiful face, but no 
longer that of a very young woman. 

And, indeed, the troubles and anxieties peculiar to 
middle age were already thickening around her. At 
the time of her brother's death her eldest son, Fletcher 
Norton, was a youth of nineteen. His cousin, Lord 
Dufferin, describes him as the one of his generation 
who showed the most of that peculiar grace and light- 
ness of wit which seems the birthright of the Sheridan 
family, modified and softened, however, by the most 
exquisite gentleness and tact. He had been a very 
delicate child and boy, but his frequent illnesses made 
even closer the link between him and his mother, whose 
joy and pride he was ; and, as he grew older, he became 
her intimate and chosen companion. He had inherited 
many of her gifts — her taste for music, her warm and 
ready sympathies, her gaiety, tempered, in his case, 
by a strong religious tendency, even as a boy in Eton. 
Indeed, it was probably at Eton (very much influenced 
by the Oxford movement during his last years there) 
that he received his first impulse towards the Roman 
Catholic Church, of which he died a member. 

It was decided that he should go from Eton directly 
into diplomacy, and he received his first appointment 
to one of the minor positions in the British Legation 
in Lisbon, under Sir Hamilton Seymour, in the 
autumn of 1847. 

The summer before he entered upon his new duties, 
his mother was permitted to take him abroad with her; 
no doubt under the conditions usually imposed by her 
husband on such occasions — that she paid all the 
expenses of the trip. 

The next summer, 1848, he was with her again, 



2o8 NEW QUARREL WITH HER HUSBAND [chap, xvi 

invalided back from Lisbon ; and, indeed, except for 
his health, it must have been a relief to an anxious 
mother to have her son safe in England during that 
year of revolutions abroad. 

It was during this same summer of 1848 that George 
Norton at last approached his wife through his solicitor 
for her long-desired consent to his plan to raise money 
on her settlement. 

In every climax of this one great subject of dis- 
cord and disaster between these two people, viz. his 
obligations for her support, there were plenty of 
faults on both sides, but always with a difference in 
her favour. 

Her imprudent outbursts against her husband — 
which seldom took any form but bitter, violent words 
— seem almost the necessary result of bringing a 
generous, impulsive nature into unwilling contact with 
a strangely base, unworthy one ; while he, on his side, 
never lost a chance of taking advantage of every oppor- 
tunity afforded him by her angry impatience under his 
endless withdrawals and double-dealings, to drive a 
hard, even an unjust bargain with her. 

In this case he applied to Fletcher, still invalided 
home with his mother, to press the desired conditions* 
upon her. Perhaps he did not realise the peculiar 
aggravation it would be to his wife's spirit to have 
this boy thus mingled in the haggling and bargaining 
which had become so hopelessly necessary in all 
attempts of his parents to come to an understanding. 
But whether he realised it or not, it entirely served 
his purpose. As she says herself: "As soon as my 
son interfered, I made haste to yield : I wrote to 
Mr. Leman, who acted as solicitor for my trustees, 
to say that 1 consented to all Mr. Norton proposed — 
mainly because it is intolerable to me to have my son 
talk over matters of this kind from his father." 

But this time it was to be a formal regular separation, 
with all the trustees and safeguards prescribed by 
custom. And this time it was the gentleman who was 



1848] LEGAL SEPARATION 209 

to have been her trustee who declined to be a party to 
conditions he thought too notoriously unfair to the 
legally non-existent wife whom he was to represent in 
the agreement. 

Upon this Mrs. Norton, with characteristic im- 
patience and imprudence, declared that if she could 
not obtain a legal separation, she was perfectly willing 
to sign any other kind of deed or bond which could be 
taken as a substitute for it. A deed was accordingly 
drawn up by Mr. Norton's solicitor. 

By this deed she bound herself to give her consent 
to the mortgage of the trust property, and agreed to 
certain conditions dictated by her husband, chiefly in 
regard to his liability for her debts — while he on his 
part bound himself to pay her a yearly allowance of 
^500 instead of ;^400 as heretofore till Lord Grantley's 
death, when his own succession to the peerage would 
give an opportunity for a more favourable arrange- 
ment for his wife ; promising, further, never again to 
interfere with her affairs. 

She was too impatient even to wait in town till the 
deed was drawn up, but had it sent after her to 
Scotland for her signature, after it had been signed 
by Mr. Norton and the solicitor, Mr. Leman. The 
witness for her signature seems to have been the 
Hon. Edmund Phipps, a connection by marriage of 
George Norton and a personal friend of her own. 

Her son had by that time returned to his 
position in Lisbon ; but she was still wretchedly 
unhappy about him, and we find her back in London 
at the beginning of November writing to Abraham 
Hayward. 

'■'' November d, 1848. 

•' Dear Avocat, 

" Lord Melbourne, in his letter of this morning, 
begs me to persuade you to come to Brocket. I am 
sure if you have leisure you will need no persuading, 
and having now become an fait as to his odd ways, 
will simply write him a note saying I have immedi- 

27 



2IO FLETCHER'S ILLNESS [chap, xvi 

ately given you his message, and that you could come 
down for a few days on such a day as he likes, and 
will come if you hear nothing to the contrary. 

" I feel very dreary and disheartened, what with 
Fletcher's illness and one thing and another. I can't 
abide to be talked utilitarianism to (on that account). 
Adieu, good Avocat. We are off on Thursday at 
latest for tranquil Frampton." 

That she had good reason for some of these dreary 
feelings was proved by the news received by her from 
Portugal almost immediately after the date of this 
letter, that her son was seriously ill again, dying 
perhaps. It was an emergency that could not be 
met by prudence or practical expediency. She gave 
up all her engagements with her publishers, her plans 
for new work, and began to prepare for instant 
departure for Portugal. Her old friend. Lord Mel- 
bourne, was struck with paralysis and died without 
her ever seeing him again. She received the news of 
his death two weeks before she sailed, about the 
middle of December, in the steam-packet which plied 
between Lisbon and Great Britain. Her younger son, 
Brinsley, went with her. 

But Fletcher did not die. His mother had the 
extreme happiness of nursing him back to life again. 
Gradually she saw him grow stronger, able to move 
from his bed to his sofa, and then to play a little on 
his guitar and listen to her singing. But he was 
still far from having recovered, still too weak for the 
passage home, when she wrote the following letter to 
Sir Alexander Duff Gordon to congratulate him on 
the birth of a son. 

" Lisbon, /z^«^ 9, 1849 
" Dear Semi-Hub, 

" 1 would have delighted in being Maurice's 
godmother. I thought of asking Lucie, but then I 
bethought me, * Lo ! 'tis a male child, and a Hidalgo, 
and there will be some family grandee invited to the 
dignity of being the fat darling's godmother,' so I 
desisted. 



1849] PORTUGUESE SOCIETY 211 

" I am most glad that Lucie goes on well. How 
often I wish for you both, I cannot say ; sometimes 
selfishly, for me, sometimes for your own sakes. 
Fletcher is too weak, Harry Howard too lazy and 
dispirited to see any of the sights of Lisbon, and 
Brownie (hear it, oh Punch) is too fine to like walking 
with me and my donkey, and says * ladies in a foreign 
capital ' ought not to ride donkeys. Often I am 
reduced to converse with the faithful Childe [Mrs. 
Norton's maid] who, after a pause,' thus renews the 
topics of the day : * I beg your pardon, ma'am, but is 
it true Her Majesty has been shot at ? ' * I beg your 
pardon, ma'am, but there is most astonishing shabby 
turnouts among the noblemen's carriages in this 
country,' an observation which chimes in with my 
own opinions, and which I therefore receive with the 
more cordiality. 

" I had a woman friend, very intelligent; but what 
with her constant rehearsals for private theatricals 
and performances of love (already some years re- 
hearsed) with a velvet-eyed Spanish attache here, I 
see little of her. 

"The Pope's nuncio is a great friend, but he has 
bursts of absence (during which, I believe, he does 
penance for our interviews — to no purpose), re- 
appearing gay, boyish, and sinful, like an otter coming 
up to breathe. 

" The Portuguese society is stiff and disjointed — 
indeed, it ain't jointed at all — only stiff; every one 
civil, smiling, and apparently anxious, if they knew 
how, to Her amitie with you, but never an inch nearer. 
A Portuguese gentleman told me it was not unusual 
to see a lady in the winter and dance with her several 
nights, and never meet her again till the winter after. 
They hardly ever visit, or receive visits — never men, 
at least in very few Portuguese families. The women 
meet with apparent cordiality, kiss each other, and 
then sit down in a formal row, never stir afterwards 
the whole evening, and seldom speak even to those they 
have just embraced. Nobody reads or writes. They 
sing sometimes, and always look out of the window. 
I am sure it is good for the eyes to be ignorant, and to 
stare out of the window, for oh, the pretty eyes I see 
here among the women ! — the look of mingled laziness, 



212 FLETCHER'S ILLNESS [chap, xvi 

curiosity, and passion, which replaces the English 
intelligence and good behaviour of expression. I think 
the Infanta's daughter, Comtesse Quinares, has the 
most beautiful eyes that ever opened on the world, 
like pools among the dead brown autumn leaves on a 
warm summer night, with stars looking down into 
them. 

" Love to Lucie and the children. 

" Your affectionate 

" Carry." 

But though able to make such amusing material 
of her experiences in Portugal while writing to her 
friends, there was much to make that winter of exile 
a time of very bitter memories for her. 

It was hardly to be expected that her husband would 
be any special help or comfort on such an occasion, 
fond and proud as he seems to have been of his eldest 
son. For emergency always seemed to bring out the 
meaner side of this strange, selfish being with whom 
her own life was so fatally entangled. 

He allowed his wife to bear all the extraordinary 
expenses entailed by Fletcher's long, dangerous illness, 
and by her own enforced residence in Lisbon while 
nursing her son back to life ; he refused even to repay 
a small sum of money she had been obliged to borrow 
from Sir Hamilton Seymour while making her pre- 
parations to bring the invalid back to England. 

But the resentment she no doubt felt and expressed 
against her husband on this occasion did not prevent 
her from receiving him with perfect friendliness in 
Chesterfield Street when he came there to visit his 
son. Indeed, throughout her long life nothing is more 
remarkable than the way in which even reasonable 
bitterness against injury melted, whenever the occasion 
demanded, into the kindest actions. 

George Norton himself mentioned a little incident 
which occurred at this time when husband and wife 
met almost daily in their son's sick-room. 

** I was remarking to him [Fletcher] that I was 



1849] LORD MELBOURNE'S LEGACY 213 

about taking a new lease for my house [in Wilton 
Place] when she said, ' What nonsense, when there is 
a room for you here.' " 

But it was impossible for him to understand or 
appreciate her impulsive hospitality. He hurried 
to put it down to some base ulterior motive on 
her part. 

Her most pressing need for money was unexpectedly 
relieved, though not by him. 

When Lord Melbourne died, the preceding autumn, 
he left, beside his will, a letter to his brother Lord 
Beauvale, giving certain pecuniary directions in favour 
of Lady Brandon and Mrs. Norton, and containing 
a solemn declaration that what he had instructed the 
Attorney-General to say on his trial as to the latter's 
purity was true. He said that as his indiscretion had 
exposed her to obloquy and suspicion, he was bound 
to renew this declaration, 

Mrs. Norton herself relates how the first payment 
of this legacy beeame due in the autumn of her return 
from Lisbon, — 

" when I was thinking where we should have to go 
next : to Madeira, or the Cape of Good Hope, to see 
my son die as my father had died : when I was already 
well aware of the uselessness of appealing to my 
husband to bear his share of all that unusual expense." 

It was not a time, one will agree, to refuse such 
welcome aid out of pride, or fine-drawn scruples. 

"I was simply glad," she confesses " (let those sneer 
at it who please), that with such a husband and such 
a destiny of never-ending troubles, the family of the 
man in whose name I had suffered so much were 
willing to prove, not for my sake, but for his, that his 
kindness to me outlived him," 

The next year she spent abroad with her invalid 
son, drifting about in search of health, which for a 



214 THE QUEEN OF HOLLAND [chap, xvi 

while at least, was to be successful. Part of this time 
she was with her sister, Lady Dufferin. And during 
this period of foreign travel began her very real 
friendship with the Queen of Holland, wife of 
William in. 

We get a charming impression of this royal personage 
a few years later from Motley's Letters. 

^'•August 1856. 
" She is tall and very fair, and must have had a great 
deal of blonde, German beauty. Her voice is agree- 
able, and she speaks English, not only with great 
elegance and fluency, but almost without foreign 
accent. We talked a good deal too about Mrs. Norton, 
of whom she expressed the most unbounded admiration 
for her genius and the charm of her conversation." 

At the time of her first relations with Mrs. Norton 
the Queen must have been a woman of about thirty-two, 
saddened by the loss of her second son while still 
quite a little child. It was perhaps some such human 
link which made the very human relation between this 
queen and this English stranger. 

The long sojourn abroad was broken for Mrs. Norton 
by an illness of Mrs. Sheridan's in the autumn of 1850, 
an illness so serious as to summon the daughter home 
to England. Mrs. Sheridan rallied for a time, though 
she never really recovered, and died at last in June 
185 1 ; and during the whole winter of 1850-1 we find 
Mrs. Norton near her mother in her old house in 
Chesterfield Street. 




Sn^^'U'aUL^ i\.i 






CHAPTER XVII 

STIRLING OF KEIR — *' STUART OF DUNLEATH " 

Mrs. Norton's return to England was chronicled by 
her old friend, Abraham Hayward, in a letter to one of 
his friends : 

'■^November 2, 1850. 

" Mrs. Norton is in town, escorted back from 
Brussels by Milnes and Stirling." 

The first-named of these was an old acquaintance, 
the poet Monckton Milnes, afterwards Lord Houghton, 
whose peculiar form of wit is mischievously charac- 
terised by Mrs. Norton's nickname for him, " The Bird 
of Paradox." 

The other was Stirling of Keir, afterwards Sir 
William Stirling-Maxwell, the man who was to be, 
many years later, her second husband — a young 
Scotsman, who had won a name as a writer in a 
comparatively unknown field of scholarship on the 
appearance of his first important work, " Annals of 
the Artists in Spain." This friendship, so much closer 
and more lasting than those that came before and 
after it, would seem to have sprung up and flourished 
in the very unlikeness of the two natures thus drawn 
to one another. He was a High Churchman and a 
Tory ; a man of an exquisitely fastidious scholarship, 
which kept him recasting and polishing what he 

21S 



2i6 STIRLING OF KEIR [chap, xvii 

happened to be writing, till he died with his principal 
work still unfinished ; a man of method, a collector 
with a passion for small and fanciful details, with 
an intense pride of family and inheritance, as is shown 
by the quaint epitaph he once wrote on himself: 

" Here lies Stirling of Keir, 
A very good man, but queer. 
If you want to find a queerer, 
You must dig up a Stirling of Keirer." 

Very gentle, and kind, and unobtrusive, yet exceed- 
ingly pertinacious to obtain what he once set his mind 
on ; warmly liked by his friends, especially his men- 
friends — " the prince of good fellows " the American 
Ticknor calls him ; with many pleasant tastes and 
appreciations which would have made him a delightful 
companion. Very agreeable to look at, too, with his 
narrow Scottish face and high, well-bred features, but 
slightly made, with a scholar's stoop. And in spite of 
the tenacity of his personal qualities, not a strong 
man, with none of the warm, spontaneous impulses 
which made Mrs. Norton so young, which kept her 
young, while he grew old, so that in the end the 
ten years' difference of age between them seems almost 
to have been reversed in her favour. 

Perhaps it was her very warmth and youth and 
generous impulsiveness which attracted him to her, 
quite as much as her beauty and brilliancy. And 
as for her ! One wonders whether the woman ever 
existed who could remain quite cold to the affectionate 
admiration of a man ten years her junior, with all 
its sudden renewal of old flatteries, old conclusions, 
at a time of her life when she had begun to think that 
part of her history finished. 

But there was much besides a new romantic friend- 
ship to make this year of return to her own country a 
sort of crisis in the life of Mrs. Norton. She was forty- 
three. The past, which might easily have fallen into a 
kind of unreality during her two years' wandering on 



1850] "VICTORINE" 217 

the Continent, must have come back with a sudden 
recoil upon her when she found herself again in 
familiar places, among the half-forgotten obligations 
of old conventions and old friends. Her relations 
with her husband had long been quasi-friendly, but 
it is unlikely that even the possibility of a renewal 
of intercourse with him, however formal, however 
slight, could have made any impression on her but 
pain. She was generous enough to forgive, to over- 
look to an incredible extent the injury he had once 
inflicted on her — to forgive, but never to forget, for 
she was not a woman who easily forgot anything. 
A very slight circumstance was enough to stir old 
half-dead memories and bring them to life again. 
And everything about her just then might have 
suggested half-dead memories. The form they some- 
times took, and the extravagant use she made of them, 
is shown by a letter of her old friend Sir Henry 
Taylor, written some time this same winter. 

"On Saturday I dined and went to the play with 
Mrs. Norton, which sounds gay, but which is as 
saddening a way of passing an evening as I could 
find. Her society is saddening to me in itself, so 
glorious a creature to look at even as she is — so 
transcendent formerly, and now so faded in beauty 
and foundered in life. She went to see a play called 
Victorine (which I think you have seen), in order to 
see what would be the effect upon her of seeing now 
what she had seen eighteen years ago, and never 
since. The effect was what she probably expected, 
to make her cry — not, I think, at anything in the play, 
but at the collocation of the past with the present." 

This play, Victorine, was presented in London during 
the first years of the reign of William IV., at the 
height of Mrs. Norton's own early triumphs. But 
besides what Sir Henry Taylor rather ponderously 
calls the "collocation of the past with the present"; 
besides the more subtle influence of fresh emotional 
experience, with its necessary accompaniment of pain 

28 



2i8 "STUART OF DUNLEATH " [chap, xvii 

for any moment of happiness, and its necessary revolt 
against the dead-weight of obligation which she must 
carry for the rest of her life, there was a very simple 
and obvious reason for this sudden recrudescence of 
the past — her own youth, which was beginning to lie 
so far behind her that she might be supposed almost 
to have forgotten it, or at least to look back upon 
its struggles and useless sacrifices with philosophic 
calm. 

All this winter of 1 850-1 she was preparing for 
the press a new novel, " Stuart of Dunleath," perhaps 
even now the most read and best known of her 
writings — interesting to us, however, not so much for 
its own sake, charming as it is, as for the light it 
throws on its author. For, in spite of obvious in- 
compatibilities, we must still feel that " Stuart of 
Dunleath " is a book made out of the very warp and 
woof of her own experience. Nothing is less like 
herself than her heroine, Eleanor Raymond, whom she 
describes as " without brilliancy, without contrast ; 
nymph-like, classical, colourless — the pale red of the 
small melancholy mouth, the grey hazel of the shy 
passionate eyes, the soft brown of the luxuriant hair, 
all melting into one harmony of tint like a fair Italian 
picture " — a creature, gifted indeed and fine-spirited, 
but peculiarly tender, sensitive, helplessly submissive 
to each new shock of adverse fortune. 

Yet, as one reads, one is strangely convinced that 
this gentle being is, if not Mrs. Norton herself, stripped 
of the hard human alloy which made her the cause 
sometimes, as well as the victim of her own mis- 
fortunes, yet at least the kind of creature that would 
have most deeply roused her own sympathies and 
admiration if she had seen her the victim she herself 
describes. Such substitution in the chief character 
would not diminish, rather increase the author's 
personal emotions while writing such a book. For 
Eleanor's story has many things about it strangely 
like her own. 



1850-51] ELEANOR RAYMOND 219 

It is the story of a child, tenderly brought up to 
love and admire a young and charming man, whom 
her dying father had appointed as her guardian, 
confronted at the same time with the loss of her 
fortune and of her early friend ; for David Stuart is 
supposed to have committed suicide from remorse 
over the unsuccessful outcome of his unwarrantable 
speculations with the sums entrusted to him. Left 
penniless by her guardian's imprudence — to put no 
worse a name to it — she is persuaded by those about 
her to marry a man she does not love, who, after his 
first passion for her is exhausted, treats her with 
extreme brutality. Her two children, while still little 
boys, are drowned while out in a boat with their 
father. 

And just at the point when her husband's open 
infidelity has added the last straw to her other mis- 
fortunes, the hero, Stuart of Dunleath, comes back 
from Canada, where he has been living through all 
the years of Eleanor's marriage, busy in replacing the 
lost fortune, in which undertaking he at last succeeded, 
by means more convincing than those the fiction of 
that day usually troubled itself to provide for its 
readers. He comes back to see his former ward and 
get her forgiveness. She has always loved him. 
Perfectly innocently, she loves him still, and he, for 
the first time, loves her. 

An extraordinary exhibition of brutality on the part 
of Eleanor's husband. Sir Stephen Penrhyn, brings 
matters to a crisis. Eleanor leaves her husband, and 
refuses ever to go back to him. She even consents, 
in her first weak impulse of bitterness against him, to 
begin proceedings of divorce, by David Stuart's advice, 
and with the implied understanding that her first free 
step will be marriage with himself. 

The interest of the book, in fact, centres in the 
struggle of the heroine between her duty in an 
unhappy marriage and her love for a man in every 
way fitted to receive her love. It is a question 



220 "STUART OF DUNLEATH" [chap, xvii 

whether any woman, herself engaged in something of 
the same struggle, could write such a story without 
drawing largely on her own inner experiences. 

It is with the confessed intention of throwing light 
on Mrs. Norton's own inner experience at this period 
that all the passages quoted from this book have been 
selected. 

" It is always easier to a woman than to a man to 
admit what the Portuguese proverb calls * the im- 
possibility of impossible things.' The boundaries of 
duty, religion, and social necessity are walls round a 
woman's heart and light fences round a man's. So 
high, so blank, so difficult to her that often she never 
even looks beyond, or, having looked, drops back with 
a sighing farewell to the world of hope without. So 
easy, so little of a bar to him that, let passion but 
spur him, and he leaps at once." 

And a little further on, in the midst of the unhappy 
wife's temptation to give herself up to this new 
love : 

" She remembered how passionately enamoured of 
her her husband had seemed to be, and how soon that 
love vanished, leaving the dregs of a fitful admiration, 
which made her almost loathe her own beauty, as the 
only attraction she possessed for him. What if all 
men's love vanished so in the security of wedded life ? 
She knew she was sure of David's pity, of his tender- 
ness ; that he would never maltreat her ; but his love — 
real love — the only love that was worth inspiring — the 
only love that could endure, the love wherein all 
things are pure, all things are holy, for which Heaven's 
blessing could be asked and Heaven's blessing granted 
— would that be hers ? — would he, could he, give her 
that under the circumstances ?" 

A little further on we find a strangely fervid acknow- 
ledgment that nothing can do away with the sacred 
obligation of the marriage vow, in which every 
word seems charged with a very passion of personal 
renunciation. 



1 850-5 1 J ELEANOR RAYMOND 221 

" In Eleanor's youth she had married a man she did 
not love, whom she did not profess to love, for certain 
advantages, to avoid certain threatening miseries. She 
had enjoyed those advantages, she had been rescued 
from those miseries ; and now that they were over, 
had she the right to annul the unloving vow for the 
sake of the first, her only great temptation ? She saw 
herself standing before the sacrament table, listening 
and trembling under her long white veil, a young and 
most unhappy bride, vowing for all the years that 
should intervene between that passing instant and 
death. When she made that vow, she made it with 
simple sincerity and with deep, sorrowful awe ; when 
she made it she believed in truth that only death 
could end the union by which it pledged her to abide. 

" True, her husband was false to her ; but his false- 
hood could not quit her of her vow. His sin was not 
to be balanced by her sin ; even were it because of his 
sin, and not because of her own wild love, that she 
had for ever forsaken the shelter of his house." 

There are many more passages of the same kind. 
The whole account of this imagined struggle between 
duty and inclination is, in fact, remarkable for its 
clear-sighted analysis and rejection of every argument 
which might have given Mrs. Norton a right to seek 
her own happiness in ways which might still lie open 
to her. For in the end the poor young heroine gives 
up her life to her duty with very scant reward, for her 
lover almost immediately consoles himself for her loss 
by a marriage with a very charming lady who makes 
him happier than he quite deserves. Yet at the last 
there was this one touch of comfort for Eleanor, in the 
secret, invincible consciousness that, come what might, 
it was not David's wife but herself who had been the 
real love of his life. Mrs. Norton declares : 

** Oh feel sure, Eleanor! He spoke no more than 
truth when he told you, you were his ideal of love 
and loveliness. The woman who is so loved may 
have successors, as she has had predecessors ; but 
rivals she has none. Lone and different as the moon 



222 "STUART OF DUNLEATH" [chap, xvii 

in a heaven full of stars, she remains in the world of 
that man's heart. He has known other women, and 
he has known her. It may be the love of his youth, 
or the wife of his old age — first love or last love, it 
matters not. The love, the one love that fulfils all the 
exigencies of illusion, all the charms of sense, and all 
the pleasures of companionship, comes but once in 
man's lifetime. The rest are substitutes, makeshifts 
for love ; to them in vain he shall affirm, or deny, that 
which they desire or dread to hear. In his heart a 
shadow sits throned, who for ever bends down to 
listen, to watch those who would approach him, and 
bar them out with whispers of sorrowful comparison 
and the delight of remembered days." 



The passage gains in value when we remember that 
it was written by a woman richly endowed with the 
qualities which make friendship difficult between men 
and women, and by her unfortunate position for ever 
denied a more tender relation than friendship — for 
ever condemned to see the men who had once cared 
for her and for whom she might have cared, turn to 
some other woman, less lovely, less satisfying perhaps 
than herself, leaving her only memories. 

But it would be unfair and inconsistent with Mrs. 
Norton's natural buoyancy of temper to leave her too 
long in this melancholy shadow. We read of her, for 
instance, in Lady Eastlake's reminiscences of that 
same winter in London society. 

^^ January 28. — At the Bunsens' yesterday I saw 
Mrs. Norton, and looked at her well. Her beauty 
is, perhaps, of too high an order to strike at first, 
especially as she is now above forty. It did not give 
me much artistic pleasure, but I could see that I 
should probably think her more and more beautiful. 
Also I did not see her speak or smile, as she was 
listening to music. Lady Lyell was in great beauty ; 
to my mind she has far more beauty of a legitimate 
kind than Mrs. Norton, though she does not use her 
eyes so ably and wickedly." 



1851] LETTER TO LADY DUFF GORDON 223 

This probably refers to that habit which Fanny 
Kemble elsewhere remarks of Mrs. Norton — viz. her 
keeping her eyes cast down, even while she sang or 
talked. So, when at last she did raise her lashes, 
which were very beautiful and soft and dark, it gave 
them the more effect. 

In July of this same year we have the following gay 
little letter from her to Lady Duff Gordon : 

''July 185 1. 

" My dear Lucie, 

" We have never thanked you for the red Pots, 
which no early Christian should be without, and 
which add that finishing stroke to the splendour of 
our demesne, which was supposed to depend on a 
roc's ^gg in less intelligent times. We have now a 
warm Pompejian appearance, and the constant con- 
templation of these classical objects favours the beauty 
of the facial line ; for what can be deduced from the 
great fact apparent in all the statues of antiquity, that 
straight noses were the ancient custom, but the logical 
assumption that the constant habit of turning up 
the nose at unseemly objects, such as the ' National 
Gallery ' and other offensive and obtrusive things, 
has produced the offensive modern divergence from 
the real true and proper line of profile ? I rejoice to 
think that we ourselves are exempt. I attribute this 
to our love of Pompejian Pots (on account of the 
beauty and distinction of this Pot's shape I spell it 
with a big P), which has kept us straight in a world 
of crookedness. The pursuit of profiles under diffi- 
culties ! How much more rare than a pursuit of 
knowledge ! Talk of setting good examples to our 
children. Bah ! Let us set Pompejian rots before 
our children, and when they grow up they will not 
depart from them. 

" Stirling is gone to Scotland to look at his un- 
finished house. I very much doubt its being fit to 
live in for two months ; none of the grates are fixed. 
But he will report when he returns, in a week's time. 

" I called for you the wet day you departed, to carry 
you to our den, and Lord Lansdowne came after his 
dinner, making sure of finding you; but you were 
gone. 



224 STIRLING OF KEIR [chap, xvii 

" My family are all scattering abroad, but wait — 
some of them — for the wedding of Mabel Graham on 
August y} It is a most satisfactory marriage in all 
respects. 

" Brin continues very seedy; Fletcher pretty brisk. 
When shall you again be seen in London? Food 
is there at five o'clock every day on our table, but 
slumber is only to be had on the house steps. 

" Your affectionate 

" Carry." 

The unfinished state of Mr. Stirling's house at Keir 
was owing to the extensive alterations which he had 
lately entered upon to change the place he had in- 
herited from his father in 1847 into the beautiful, 
stately form it still retains, with its portico and wings 
and terraced approaches. He had already begun to 
make plans to fill it, as we see from one of Lady Duff 
Gordon's letters : 

'■'July 20, 1851. 

" We have a kind of half-project of going to Scotland 
this year and visiting Stirling at Keir, together with 
Mrs. Norton and her son, with whom I am nearly as 
much friends as with his mother. He has grown into 
a delightful young man, and certainly twenty-one is a 
charming age when it is not odious." 

The autumn was spent in a series of visits in the 
north of England and in Scotland, where, for the 
first time, Mrs. Norton saw Keir. It also marks 
the beginning of her last wretched struggle with her 
husband. 

* Daughter of Sir James Graham, vi. to Lord Feversham. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

LIFE ABROAD — LAST QUARREL WITH HER HUSBAND 

On June 9, 1851, Mrs. Sheridan died, at the house of 
her eldest daughter, Lady Dufferin, having long been 
in delicate health and, for the latter part of her life, 
nearly blind. She had grieved also greatly over the 
loss of her sons, and over her daughter's misfortunes, 
which had driven her gradually more and more out of 
the world, till at last she lived in almost complete 
retirement, though never inactive. Her patient, 
energetic life came to an end in perfect consistency 
with its beginning, and she left behind her a very 
beautiful example of earnestness, usefulness, and 
unobtrusive self-sacrifice. 

At her death George Norton inherited the life- 
interest in his wife's portion from her father, which 
had not been secured to her in any way, and Mrs. 
Norton inherited, secured to her most carefully by 
every expression of her mother's will, an income for 
life of ;^48o. One cannot but be amused by the tone 
Mr. Norton assumed in speaking of this inheritance, 
as though he had not been quite fairly treated by it. 

"In 1851," he says, "my son's expenses at Oxford 
increasing, and my own expenses in Yorkshire being 
greater to keep up the rents in the then depressed 
state of agriculture, I learned that Mrs. Norton had 
been left ;^5oo per annum by her mother, from whom I 

22s 29 



2 26 LAST QUARREL WITH HER HUSBAND [chap, xviii 

was not aware that she had any expectations. I then 
proposed a reduction of her allowance, which she 
would not accede to." 



She refused, perhaps, with the more emphasis 
because she did not believe her son's expenses at 
Oxford had anything to do with her husband's pro- 
posal to divide her inheritance with him. Her second 
son, Brinsley, after his return from Portugal, had been 
sent by his father to a private tutor to be prepared for 
Oxford, where he was entered at University College, 
the year of his mother's return to England. 

** Kindly, clever, handsome, but wild," is the judg- 
ment of one of his kinsmen. He was so recklessly 
extravagant at college that he had to be withdrawn at 
the end of his first year, deeply in debt. His health, 
too, seems to have suffered. His mother was anxious 
to take him away with her to Italy, where she was 
going to join her eldest son, who had been lately made 
secretary of a secretary of the British Embassy at 
Naples. She was full of anxiety for his future, pain- 
fully aware that a woman is not the best judge of what 
is best to be done for a youth who had already shown 
himself headstrong and extravagant. 

Her husband was quite ready to let him go wherever 
his mother chose to take him, always on condition she 
found the means for supporting him there. Naples 
was not exactly the place one would have selected 
for a lad who had shown a weakness for pleasure ; 
nor was idleness the best opportunity for over- 
coming dangerous propensities. But whatever mis- 
takes Mrs. Norton made in this respect were exacted 
from her in the future to the extreme of her powers 
to pay. 

AH the last year of her stay at Naples she was 
hard at work on another novel to pay Brinsley's 
Oxford debts ; she was trying to find money to 
pay the preliminary training of some profession for 
him. 



1 85 1-3] MONEY MATTERS 227 

These expensive responsibilities, however, had no 
effect on George Norton, who was determined to make 
the legacy an excuse for curtailing his allowance to 
his wife. 

She reminded him of the signed contract between 
them ; he replied that he was not legally bound by 
that contract any longer than he pleased to acknow- 
ledge it. She could not believe this ; she thought he 
was only trying to frighten her into abating her claim. 
But when she came to draw on her quarter's allowance 
for March 1852, six months before the first instalment 
of her mother's legacy could be paid, her cheques were 
returned dishonoured. When she remonstrated — when 
she represented to him that she had not the means to 
pay these creditors without the money she had a right 
to expect from him ; that she had already spent all she 
could borrow to prevent the public actions these 
creditors were already instituting to recover their 
claims by law, he replied through his solicitor that he 
declined all discussion of the subject. 

She had hurried back to England in the early 
summer of 1853 to try to bring order out of this con- 
fusion, only to find a disquieting difference of legal 
opinion as to the validity of the contract by which she 
believed her husband bound. In honour, yes ; they 
all agreed he was bound in honour to respect his 
witnessed signature. But in law, no. In law, a man 
could not contract with his own wife. 

She was advised, however, to let one of these suits 
come up for trial, as a sort of test case, to get a legal 
verdict on the subject. This case came finally to a 
hearing in the Westminster County Court on 
August 18, 1853. The plaintiffs were the Thrupps, 
the carriage builders ; the bill was for repairs of 
a little carriage, in use for twelve years, the same 
which she had set up with such pride, and paid for 
out of the proceeds of her very successful poem, 
"The Dream." 

The defendant was, of course, George Norton, as 



228 LAST QUARREL WITH HER HUSBAND [chap, xviii 

a married woman could not be sued for debt. On 
ordinary occasions, indeed, Mrs. Norton would not 
have appeared at all, but in this case she was sub- 
poenaed as a witness. 

The dingy little court-room was crowded to excess 
with a very different audience from that usually 
attracted by such occasions. Indeed, there was hardly 
space about the bench for the throng of witnesses, 
subpoenaed by George Norton, in the zeal of his own 
defence. Among them were to be seen a former 
maid of his wife's, by whom he hoped to prove her 
extravagance ; her publishers and bankers, by whom 
he hoped to prove that she had ample means to 
pay her debts without help from him ; and herself, 
whom he hoped to betray into still more damaging 
admissions. 

The only excuse one may find for his conduct on 
this occasion was that he had been both amazed and 
enraged in his study of his wife's bank-book, delivered 
up to him on demand by his wife's bankers, to find 
that she had more money than he had supposed. It 
was not in his nature to ask himself what right he had 
to her whole confidence, either in this or in any other 
matter. He could only feel that he had been deceived, 
managed. There is no doubt that she had often 
managed him in the past, as much for his own advan- 
tage as for hers. But whenever he suspected it he 
resented it. After his separation from her, his family, 
or those unkindly disposed to her, had only to touch 
that sore spot to send him off" into the most brutal 
conclusions against her. 

So now, on finding she was a richer woman than he 
had believed, the old suspicion of her rushed back, 
and the old revengeful instinct sprang again into life, 
to strike her down, to make her suffer for it. She 
herself describes their encounter in the court-room. 

*' When I first saw my husband my courage sank ; 
the horrible strangeness of my position oppressed me 



1853] SUBPCENAED AS A WITNESS 229 

with anger and shame ; my heart beat ; the crowd of 
people swam before my eyes ; and the answers I had 
begun to make, and declarations I had intended to 
struggle through, choked in my throat, which felt as 
if it were full of dust. Mr. Norton rose, gathered up 
his papers, and saying with a sneer, ' What does the 
witness say ? Let her speak up ; I cannot hear her ! ' 
he came and seated himself close to me — there was 
only the skirting-board that divided the court between 
us. I saw the glare of the angry eyes I remembered 
long ago in my home, the sneer of triumph and 
determination to crush me at all hazards. I felt, as I 
looked for an instant towards him, that he saw in me 
neither a woman to be spared public insult nor a 
mother to be spared shameful sorrow, but simply a 
claimant to be non-suited, a creditor to be evaded, 
a pecuniary encumbrance he was determined to be 
rid of. More than one of the professional gentlemen 
present appealed to the Judge whether he should be 
permitted to sit where he had placed himself; but 
there he continued to sit, instructing his counsel in 
an undertone what questions to put to me, making 
notes of the case, and occasionally peremptorily 
addressing me himself" 

But even she was not prepared for the extreme 
brutality of this last attack upon her. When the 
validity of the contract was at last brought up to be 
discussed, Mr. Norton acknowledged that, though at 
the time of signing it he had known it was not valid, 
and supposed that she did too, he would still have 
continued to be bound by it, if he had not been 
deceived by her ; for before ever entering into this 
arrangement, he had enacted, as a chief condition of 
it, his wife's solemn asseveration that she had never 
received money from Lord Melbourne — this to be con- 
sidered by her husband as her final declaration of her 
innocence in her relations with the Prime Minister. 
Her husband asserted that she made this declaration, 
that she afterwards solemnly reaffirmed it to her eldest 
son, whom her husband had chosen as his messenger 
for that purpose. But from her bank-book he found 



230 LAST QUARREL WITH HER HUSBAND [chap, xviii 

she had been in receipt of an income from Lord 
Melbourne's brother or sister ever since 1848. 

No one, not even his wife, saw at once all the 
absurd flaws in this statement. The inconsistency of 
it in the fact, for instance, that he had stopped her 
allowance months before he saw her bank-book or 
knew of the annuity paid by Lady Palmerston ; or in 
the fact that Lord Melbourne was still alive, and 
there could have been no question of what he had left 
her when the contract was drawn up and signed 
between herself and her husband. 

But every one in the room could feel the full force 
of the insult, the remarkable reassertion of the old 
slander, which had been disproved years ago by the 
verdict for Lord Melbourne, its assumption as a 
living fact, a moving force in her husband's present 
action against her. To go on in her own bitter 
words, her own apology for the scene which followed 
in the court- room : 

" From the moment the questioning began about 
Lord Melbourne I lost all self-possession. Not 
because I was ashamed of having accepted his 
bequest ; if I had thought there was shame in it I 
should not have taken it ; but because I then saw all 
the cruel baseness of Mr. Norton's intention. All 
flashed upon me at once. I felt that I no longer 
stood in that court to struggle for an income, but to 
struggle against infamy. I knew by sudden instinct 
that the husband who had so often, to me and to 
others, asserted that the trial was the work of advisers, 
was now about to pretend he believed the charge 
brought against Lord Melbourne in 1836. The wild 
exasperation came over me, which seemed so in- 
explicable to those who did not know our real story. 
He who had falsely accused me long ago, he who had 
taken my young children, and let one of them die 
without even sending for me till too late, he who 
had embittered and clouded my whole existence, who 
was now in my presence only to cheat me — was once 
more going to brand me before the world. 

" I felt giddy ; the faces of the people grew in- 



1853] SCENE IN THE COURT ROOM 231 

distinct ; my sentences became a confused alternation 
of angry loudness and husky attempts to speak. I 
saw nothing but the husband whose mercenary nature 
Lord Melbourne himself had warned me I judged too 
leniently; nothing but the gnome, proceeding again 
to dig away, for the sake of money, what remnant ot 
peace, happiness, and reputation might have rested 
in the future years of my life ; turning up, as he dug, 
dead sorrows, and buried shames, and miserable 
recollections, and careless who was hurt by them, 
so long as he evaded payment of a disputed annuity, 
and stamped his own signature, worthless. 

" I tried at first confusedly enough, as the broken 
sentences in the report showed, but afterwards as 
connectedly as I could, to explain that Lord Mel- 
bourne had left me nothing in his will ; that I believed 
he could not, his property being strictly entailed ; 
that I had never been his mistress ; that I was young 
enough, and more than young enough, to be his 
daughter, and that he had never treated me otherwise 
than as a friend ; that dying he had left nothing but a 
letter solemnly repeating his assurance of my in- 
nocence, recommending me to the generosity of his 
brother, and stating the amount of provision he 
wished made for me ; that his brother and his sister 
had abided by, and fulfilled his intentions, because his 
memory was dear to them ; and none but my husband 
had ever accused him of baseness." 

To turn from her own account to the details of the 
case which appeared the next morning in all the 
newspapers, at this point in her evidence there was a 
"burst of applause from some two hundred or three 
hundred people in the body of the court, which was 
at once properly suppressed by the order ot the 
Judge." 

She goes on herself : 

" The feeling in the court began to show itself in a 
strong and obvious sympathy for me ; and the case 
became more like a vehement debate than a judicial 
inquiry. 



232 LAST QUARREL WITH HER HUSBAND [chap, xviii 

" Mr. Leman was examined to prove that there had 
been no condition whatever (as Mr. Norton had just 
affirmed) concerning Lord Melbourne, either written 
or verbal." 

The case, however, was decided against the creditor 
and in favour of George Norton, on the technical point 
that this particular bill had been contracted before the 
allowance had been withdrawn. 

Mrs. Norton announced her submission to the 
verdict with a kind of fierce resignation. 

" I do not ask for my rights. I have no rights ; I 
have only wrongs. I have no doubt I have a very 
ample income, upon an average for some years, ;^ 1,500; 
and now that I know my husband can defraud me, I 
will not live abroad with my son." 

The whole court again burst into applause. She 
goes on with her own account of it : 

" Mr. Norton then vehemently addressed me, the 
Judge, the reporters for the press. He said I had told 
the grossest falsehoods ; that he only regretted he had 
no opportunity at present; that he hoped at some 
future opportunity to ' give the contradiction that from 
his heart and soul he could give.' He moved still 
nearer to me, clenched his hand, and spoke in a 
threatening manner ; but the groaning and utter con- 
fusion in court made it difficult even for me to gather 
exactly what his threats were, except that they had 
reference to the hope of some fresh occasion of debate. 
The Judge ordered the court to be cleared, and the 
next case called on ; and so ended this disgraceful 
scene." 

The next morning all the papers were filled with a 
detailed account of the proceedings. How exasperating 
to the principal victim, who saw herself vulgarised, 
exaggerated, her statements hopelessly garbled and 
confused in the clumsy report of the evidence — any 
one who has ever been in anything like the same 



1853] LETTER TO "THE TIMES" 233 

position will best understand. And one of the most 
intolerable complications of her position — intolerable 
especially to a woman of her peculiar temperament — 
was that, while she had been subjected to a long, 
insulting cross-examination, made to tell the court the 
number of her servants, the money she was in the 
habit of giving away in charity, the most personal 
and private details of her daily life, had been forced 
to read the most humiliating misstatements about Lord 
Melbourne in the reports of the trial, she could not 
herself make the slightest effort to get her own state- 
ment before the world without being told that she 
was courting publicity. 

Much against the wishes of her family, she did 
write and send a letter to The Times the day after 
the trial, merely to state the flaws which made her 
husband's charge against her not only insulting but 
ridiculous. 

It would have been better for her if she had hurled 
back her retort with less hard exasperation of spirit. 
A few days later appeared George Norton's reply, 
also in the form of a public letter to The Times — a 
letter of extraordinary length, and in many respects 
an extraordinary document. In the first place, it was 
a very careful reassertion of his belief in his wife's 
guilt, going back for its charges far into the past, 
before their marriage, when he represents himself as 
a blindly infatuated lover, over whom she had all 
power to deceive him as she would, mentioning a 
point of time before the birth of their two youngest 
children as the moment when he began to suspect her 
of improper intimacy with Lord Melbourne, adding 
one or two insulting little stories in confirmation of 
the justice of these suspicions, pursuing his rehearsal 
of his grievances till they seem to include and accuse 
every one in any way connected with him from earliest 
times down to the moment of this last clash of differ- 
ence between himself and his wife, when he accuses 
her of making use of the legal non-existence of a 

30 



234 LAST QUARREL WITH HER HUSBAND [chap, xviii 

married woman "to oppress him with litigation and 
costs and impair his already crippled means, which 
should have been applied to the maintenance of him- 
self and his two sons, both of them just entering on 
life." 

There is a peculiar quality running through the 
whole letter, as of a man blind and deaf to all the 
more generous impulses of the spirit — a kind of in- 
capacity for knowing his own baseness, which made 
him repeatedly assert as points in his favour things 
that must only prove him more strangely dead to pity 
or magnanimity. He taunts his wife with her readi- 
ness in the past to come back to him. He speaks of 
her painful agitation during that most painful scene 
in the County Court " as the most splendid piece of 
acting ever exhibited, however much the sober mind 
of England must revolt against the disgrace of a court 
of justice being turned into the stage of Drury Lane " 
— wishing evidently to lose no opportunity of giving 
a stab at her, wherever he knew it would hurt her 
most. 

This letter was instantly answered by several people 
more or less directly affected by some of its misstate- 
ments. Mr. Leman, George Norton's own lawyer, 
wrote to The Times flatly contradicting all his employer 
had said about the private contract which the solicitor 
had drawn up and which Mr. Norton had broken. 

Sir John Bayley wrote at length to deny all Mr. 
Norton's assertions against his wife's conduct during 
the negotiations in which Sir John himself had taken 
part. A portion of this letter I have already quoted. 

Sir William Follett was dead, and could not con- 
tradict Mr. Norton's statement that the suit against 
Lord Melbourne had been carried on with his advice. 
But Mrs. Norton herself had a letter reprinted which 
had appeared in The Times as long ago as the summer 
of 1836, written by the solicitors who had prepared 
the evidence for the prosecution, declaring that Sir 
William had neither advised nor approved nor even 



i853] LETTER TO "THE TIMES" 235 

known on what evidence the case was to rest till a 
few days before the trial. 

It would have been far better if she had been con- 
tent with such indirect methods of self-defence. But 
perhaps that would have been asking more of her 
than was in her power to do. Abraham Hayward, 
reproached by some mutual friend for not using his 
influence to prevent her from committing herself 
further, remarks ruefully : 

" I was obliged to accompany Mrs. Norton to the 
County Court, which I did simply to prevent her from 
going alone. No one can be Mrs. Norton's adviser, 
for she never follows advice. I ended by telling her, 
in Lady Seymour's presence, that she ought to be 
interdicted the use of pen, ink, and paper." 

She had reached the age, however, when no one 
can interdict a woman from what she has finally made 
up her mind to do, and her reply to her husband's 
letter came in a letter to The Times a few days later, 
quite as long, quite as angry, as his, but differing from 
his as much as might be expected from those very 
dissimilar natures, which an equally violent emotion 
has thus stripped bare and unshamed to our view. It 
is not his anger, but the meanness revealed by that 
anger, which disgusts us in George Norton's letter. 
It is only her anger, the loss of dignity and charity 
which it entails, which we regret in Mrs. Norton's 
reply. The purpose that drove her on to refute her 
husband's accusations against her, one after another, 
was not unworthy, is not to be entirely condemned, 
though it would have been better served by a more 
temperate and less personal statement. She explains 
it herself as follows in the concluding sentences of 
her letter : 

" I have done. There will always be those to whom 
a slander is precious, and who cannot bear to have 
it refuted. There are also those in whose eyes the 



236 LAST QUARREL WITH HER HUSBAND [chap, xviii 

accusation of a woman is her condemnation, and who 
care Httle whether the story be false or true, so long 
as there is, or was, a story against her. But juster 
minds, who will pause and review the circumstances 
Mr. Norton himself has published will perhaps think 
the fate of that woman a hard one, whom neither the 
verdict of a jury, nor the solemn denial of a voice from 
the dead, nor the petition of her husband for a recon- 
ciliation and oblivion of the past, can clear from a 
charge always and utterly untrue. On Mr. Norton's 
own letter I am content that people should judge us 
both. Many friends have wished me to pass over that 
letter in disdainful silence, as refuting itself; and per- 
haps, if I were happy enough to be obscure and 
unknown, that would be my course. But I have a 
position separate from my woman's destiny : I am 
known as a writer, and 1 will not permit that Mr. 
Norton's letter shall remain on the journals of Great 
Britain as the uncontradicted record of my actions. 

" I will, as far as I am able, defend a name which 
might have been only favourably known, but which 
my husband has rendered notorious. The little world 
of my chance readers may say of me, after I am dead 
and gone and my struggles over and forgotten, * The 
woman who wrote this book had an unhappy histor}^,' 
but they shall not say, 'The woman who wrote this 
book was a profligate and a mercenary hypocrite.' 
Since my one gift of writing gives me friends among 
strangers, I appeal to the opinion of strangers as well 
as that of friends. Since, in however bounded and 
narrow a degree, there is a chance that I may be 
remembered after death, I will not have my whole 
life misrepresented. 

" Let those women who have the true woman's lot 
of being unknown out of the circle of their homes 
thank God for that blessing— it is a blessing; but for 
me publicity is no longer a matter of choice. Defence 
is possible to me, not silence. And I must remind 
those who think the right of a husband so indefeasible 
that a wife ought rather to submit to the martyrdom 
of her reputation than be justified at his expense, that 
I have refrained. All I state now I might have stated 
at any time during the past unhappy years ; and I 
never did publicly state it till now — now, when I find 



1853] LETTER TO "THE TIMES" 237 

Mr. Norton slandering the mother of his children, 
endeavouring thus to overwhelm me with infamy, for 
no offence but that of having rashly asserted a claim 
upon him which was found not to be valid in law, but 
only binding on him as a man of honour." 



CHAPTER XIX 

PAMPHLET ON " ENGLISH LAWS FOR WOMEN " AND " LETTER 
TO THE queen" 

We are taught that human nature is made strong by 
suffering, but our experience shows us that often the 
reverse of this is true — that the spirit, as well as the 
body, is weakened by its scars. One can hardly see 
how the memories of Mrs. Norton's past experiences 
with her husband could have encouraged her to patience 
or mercy or self-restraint in this last encounter with 
him. 

In her examination at the trial in the Westminster 
County Court she had accused him of taking her 
copyright. He had, in fact, assumed possession of 
all her contracts with her publishers, to help him 
calculate the amount of her income; and there was 
no power in English law to force him to relinquish 
them unless he chose. We have his own vehement 
denial that he ever intended to keep them. But his 
wife's past experience of his word was not such as 
to give her any very great confidence in his last 
promise to her, if it should be to his advantage to 
break it. 

All her old indignation was roused, not against him 
individually — for (in her own words), " Gone, past, 
buried in unutterable scorn are the days in which I 
appealed either to him or from him — but against the 
existent law and that nation of gallant gentlemen who 

238 



1853-4] BRINGS OUT "ENGLISH LAWS" 239 

scarcely care and scarcely know what is the existing 
law on such subjects." 

She did not return to Italy that autumn. We hear 
of her in November staying at Clumber, the country 
place of the Duke of Newcastle, one of that notable 
group of High Church Peelites of whom the other 
two were Sidney Herbert and Gladstone. And early 
the next year she was back in London, very busy, not 
on her interrupted novel, but at her old work of 
pamphlet writing — on the old subject too, the in- 
sufferable inequalities of the English law for women ; 
reformed indeed ever so slightly by her own Infant 
Custody Bill, but still extraordinarily unjust towards 
the very class most in need of the law's protection. 

The Crimean war broke out in March 1854, not the 
most auspicious moment, we should think, for insti- 
tuting a reform of the laws about women ; but it did 
not prevent her from writing her pamphlet on this 
particular subject, " English Laws for Women of the 
Nineteenth Century," and printing it at her own expense 
for private distribution some time early in May of the 
same year. It is almost forgotten now, or remembered 
only as an undignified publication of private and 
personal grievances, made still more objectionable 
by the harsh and violent tone it retains through all 
its hundred and forty-four pages towards its principal 
victim. It has, however, plenty of excuse for its 
existence. And the impression it made on the men 
and women of that generation is incalculable, coming 
as it did at a time when public opinion had so far out- 
stripped the law in its judgment of the rights and 
wrongs of women that it was ready to be set on fire 
by the story of a woman who, to use her own words, 
" had learned the English law piecemeal by suffering 
under it." She goes on : 

" My husband is a lawyer ; and he has taught it [the 
law] to me by exercising over my tormented and 
restless life every quirk and quibble of its tyranny ; 



240 "ENGLISH LAWS FOR WOMEN" [chap, xix 

acknowledged tyranny; acknowledged, again I say, 
not by wailing, angry, despairing women, but by 
Chancellors, ex-Chancellors, legal reformers, and 
members of both Houses of Parliament." 

But (to quote from the beginning of her own work) : 

** ' It won't do to have Truth and Justice on our 
side : we must have Law and Lawyers.' 

Charles Dickens. 

" I take those words as my text. In consequence 
of the imperfect state of the law I have suffered 
bitterly, and for a number of years : I have lately been 
insulted, defrauded, and libelled ; and as the law is 
constituted I find redress impossible, 

" To publish comments on my case for the sake of 
obtaining sympathy ; to prove merely that my husband 
has been unjust, and my fate a hard one, would be a 
very poor and barren ambition, I aspire to a different 
object. I desire to prove, not my own suffering or his 
injustice, but that the present law of England cannot 
prevent any such suffering or control such injustice. 
I write in the hope that the law may be amended ; 
and that those who are at present so ill-provided as to 
have only ' Truth and Justice ' on their side, may 
hereafter have the benefit of ' Law and Lawyers.' 

" I know all that can be said on my interference 
with such a subject — all the prejudices and contempt 
with which men will receive arguments from a woman, 
and a woman personally interested. But it is of more 
importance that the law should be altered than that 
I should be approved. Many a woman may live to 
thank Heaven that I had courage and energy left to 
attempt the task ; and since no one can foretell the 
future, even men may pause ere they fling down my 
pamphlet with masculine scorn ; for the day may 
come, however improbable, to some one of my readers, 
when he would give his right hand for the sake of 
sister, daughter, or friend, that the law were in such 
a condition as to afford a chance of justice, without 
the pain of a protracted struggle, or the disgrace of a 
public brawl." 



i8s4] CRITICISM OF HER PAMPHLET 241 

The tract is largely taken up with her own story, 
told, however, with no effort to please or conciliate, 
no appeal for personal sympathy, only as a sort of 
harsh illustration of the various defects of the law as 
it stood at that day. Every statement she makes she 
enforces with the same kind of evidence which would 
make it hold good in a bill for divorce or an affidavit 
to support a petition, with the requirements of both 
which forms of document she was, poor woman, only 
too familiar. Her accounts of her husband's cruelty 
to her are made in the same ruthless fashion — stripped 
of everything except what could be proved by 
witnesses or statements other than her own, always 
including the provocation she herself might have 
given him as legally part of the story. The result 
is often unpleasing. 

She is, in fact, so eager to entrench herself in an 
impregnable position that she too often offends as a 
woman, even while she convinces by her cause. But 
it was the cause, not the woman, she was championing 
at that particular moment. It was necessary that she 
should be justified in each particular statement or 
accusation with which her pages bristle, or her tract 
against the English laws became so much waste- 
paper. 

She was often violent, always vehement, descended 
sometimes, one feels, unnecessarily into the painful 
details of her own miserable struggle, yet never with 
all her digressions losing sight of the real purpose 
which drove her onward ; concluding at last in a 
rush of passionate, thrilling words which show her 
at her best. 

" How often in the course of this session will the 
same men who read this appeal with a strong adverse 
prejudice be roused by some thought in a favourite 
author, touched by some beautiful pageant of human 
feeling, seen among glittering lights from a side box ; 
chanted, perhaps, in a foreign tongue. And yet I 
have an advantage over these, for my history is real. 

31 



242 "ENGLISH LAWS FOR WOMEN" [chap, xix 

I know there is no poetry in it to attract you. In the 
last act of this weary life of defamation I went down 
in a hack-cab, to take part in an ignoble struggle, in a 
dingy little court of justice, where I was insulted by a 
vulgar lawyer, with questions framed to imply every 
species of degradation. There was none of the pomp 
and circumstance of those woes that affect you, when 
some faultless and impossible heroine makes you 
dream of righting all the wrongs in the world. But 
faulty as I may be, and prosaic and unsympathised 
with as my position might then be, it was unjust ; and 
unjust because your laws prevent justice. Let that 
thought haunt you, through the music of your 
Sonnambulas and Desdemonas, and be with you in your 
readings of histories and romance, and your criticism 
on the jurisprudence of countries less free than our 
own. I really wept and suffered in my early youth 
for wrong done, not by me, but to me, and the ghost 
of whose scandal is raised against me this day. I 
really suffered the extremity of earthly shame without 
deserving it (whatever chastisement my other faults 
may have deserved from Heaven). I really lost my 
young children, craved for them, struggled for them, 
was barred from them, and came too late to see one 
who had died a painful and convulsive death, except 
in his coffin. I really have gone through much that, if 
it were invented, would move you, but being of your 
everyday world, you are willing it should sweep past 
like a heap of dead leaves on the stream of time, and 
take its place with other things that have gone drifting 
down 

" Ou va la feuille de rose 
Et la feuille du laurier. 

" Will none of you aid the cause I advocate, and 
forget that it was advocated by me ? Think what it 
must be to spend all one's youth, as I have spent mine, 
in a series of vain struggles to obtain any legal justice. 
Or do not think at all about me ; forget by whose 
story this appeal was illustrated. I can bring you 
others, from your own English law-books ; and let my 
part in this be only as a voice borne by the wind, as a 
cry coming over the waves from a shipwreck, to where 
you stand safe on the shore, and which you turn and 



1854] LORD CRANWORTH'S BILL 243 

listen to, not for the sake of those who call — you do not 
know them — but because it is a cry for help." 

About a month after this pamphlet was printed, 
Lord Cranworth, the Chancellor of Lord Aberdeen's 
Ministry, brought forward in the Lords a Bill to 
reform the English Marriage and Divorce Laws. 

His action in so doing, however, can hardly be 
attributed to anything Mrs. Norton had written or 
suffered in the matter. It was, in fact, a measure long 
promised, long delayed, drawn from the findings of 
a Royal Commission appointed in 1850 to look over 
the whole subject. In its first form, indeed, the Bill 
was only a plan to remove the jurisdiction of all 
matters matrimonial from the Ecclesiastical Courts, 
or Doctors' Commons, to call it by its familiar name, 
to a special court of their own, composed of the 
Chancellor and various other high dignitaries of 
the law, which should have all power to grant or 
refuse divorces, whether labsolute or those amounting 
merely to a judicial separation, and to consider all 
questions involving the legal separation of husbands 
and wives. 

It was, however, at this stage of its history so little 
a woman's measure that whereas in the past a woman 
could, though she rarely did,' obtain a divorce with 
power to remarry, just as a man could, by special 
Act of Parliament, if the Lords decided that she 
deserved it, the new court was not allowed any 
discretion in the matter, the law being hard-and- 
fast that women could not obtain this right except 
in one or two monstrous and exceptional cases of 
injury. Any idea of equal legislation in the matter 
was as unacceptable in England then as now. Indeed, 
set forth by the new Bill, a woman's opportunity 
of getting a divorce, or even a legal separation 
from her husband was even more restricted than 
it had been before, nor did the proposed measure 
even touch upon the confused injustice of a wife's 



244 •' ENGLISH LAWS FOR WOMEN " [chap, xix 

position when alienated, but not divorced from her 
husband. 

Any discussion on the subject, however, afforded 
Mrs. Norton an opportunity, which she was not slow 
to take advantage of. She watched the Bill's progress 
through the Lords, listened to the debates when it 
came up for a second reading, as her keen use of 
the various absurdities and ineptitudes which were 
let fall on that occasion most sharply and adequately 
proves. 

To quote her own words after the Bill had dis- 
appeared in Committee, not to be heard of again that 
session : 

** It drops and is given up ; the Chancellor, like the 
Runic sorceress, exclaims : 

" Leave me, leave me, to repose ; 

and all go away home, like a party of miners who 
have given up the attempt to dig out persons buried in 
the superincumbent earth. They would be very glad 
to do something towards amending the laws for 
women, but really ' the subject is so surrounded with 
difficulty.' " 

In the meantime, she herself continued to suffer 
from the inadequacy of these very laws. To resume 
her story in her own words : 

" After the creditors' case was over, Mr. Norton 
inquired whether I would ' submit to referees ' the 
point whether he ought, in honour, to abide by his 
signature, and whether I would name a referee on my 
part. I answered in the affirmative, and I named as 
my referee one who may fairly claim to inspire as 
much confidence, respect, and universal esteem from 
men of all ranks, ages, or parties as I think it ever was 
the lot of any person to enjoy : I named the Marquis of 
Lansdowne. Mr. Norton proposed his own brother. 
Lord Grantley, which nomination was declined as an 
impossible choice — impossible, recollecting the circum- 
stances of the trial, the residence of the witnesses, and 



1854] HER ALLOWANCE WITHDRAWN 245 

the nearness of connection. No other choice was pro- 
posed. Mr. Norton either felt that no unprejudiced 
gentleman in England would support him in his legal 
quibble, or he had never intended to propose a choice 
which could be accepted, which is more than probable 
From the date of my mother's death he has withheld 
entirely, and with perfect impunity, my income as his 
wife. I do not receive, and have not received for the 
last three years a single farthing from him. He retains, 
and always has retained, property that was left in my 
home — gifts made to me by my own family on my 
marriage, and to my mother by H.R.H. the Duchess 
of York ; articles bought from my literary earnings, 
books which belonged to Lord JMelbourne, and, in 
particular, a manuscript of which Lord Melbourne 
himself was the author (when a very young man), 
which Mr. Norton absolutely refused to give up. He 
has a right to everything I have in the world, and I 
have no more claim upon him than any one of the 
Queen's ladies-in waiting, who are utter strangers to 
him. I never see him. I hear of him only by attacks 
on my reputation, and I do not receive a farthing of 
support from him. His reply by attorney (dated 
April ID, 1854) to any such demand, is to bid the 
creditor 'examine the will of my mother in Doctors' 
Commons,' thereby throwing off the mask of pre- 
tence he wore, and standing openly on his legal 
irresponsibility." 

Meanwhile she herself was in debt to her creditors, 
in debt to her bankers, from whom she had borrowed 
a large sum to meet the obligations she had already 
incurred before she knew that she was to be deprived 
of part of her income. She was in debt to her printers 
for the work on which she was still engaged, hindered 
and handicapped in every way for lack of means. For 
she was always imprudent in her money arrangements, 
lavish in her generosity to those she loved — her two 
sons, the youngest entirely dependent on her ; the 
eldest, whom she proudly describes about that time 
as " already launched in life, employed in Her 
Majesty's service among junior diplomates : the 



246 " ENGLISH LAWS FOR WOMEN " [chap, xix 

wisest, kindest, and best son who ever struggled to 
do difficult duty between the parents of a divided 
home." 

All literary work, moreover, of the kind on which 
her income depended was utterly at a standstill, for a 
reason, indeed, which we need not go far to find. 

The Crimean war brought an untimely pause to 
Lord Cranworth's Divorce Bill. All through the long 
session of 1855, while the war was being fought, the 
Bill was sleeping peacefully in one of the pigeon- 
holes of Chancery. But Mrs. Norton had not been 
pleased to see it there, and, in spite of the distrac- 
tions and anxieties in which she was herself involved, 
she yet found time to bring out her next pamphlet, 
" A Letter to the Queen on Lord Cranworth's 
Marriage and Divorce Bill." Not for private circula- 
tion this, but copyrighted and published and sold 
by Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, in 
December 1855. 

Any return, however, which she may have received 
from such a sale would hardly compensate for the 
money she was obliged to forgo, the publishers' offers 
she was obliged to refuse, no longer having the time 
to fulfil them while engaged in this absorbing kind of 
writing, at a moment, too, when her value in the 
literary market as a writer of fiction had reached its 
height through the success of her latest novel. But 
such considerations never weighed very heavily with 
her in the kind of struggle she was now engaged in. 
In her own words : 

" My husband has taught me, by subpoenaing my 
publishers to account for my earnings, that my gift of 
writing was not meant for the purposes to which 
I have hitherto applied it. It was not intended that I 
should * strive for peace and ensue it ' through a life 
of much occasional bitterness and many unjust trials, 
nor that I should prove my literary ability by pub- 
lishing melodies and songs for young girls and women 
to sing in happier homes than mine, or poetry and 



1855] HER CHALLENGE TO MR. NORTON 247 

prose for them to read in leisure hours, or even please 
myself by better and more serious attempts to advocate 
the rights of the people or the education and interests 
of the poor. 

" He has made me dream that it was meant for a 
higher and stronger purpose, that gift which came not 
from man, but from God ! It was meant to enable me 
to rouse the hearts of others to examine into all the 
gross injustice of these laws, to ask the nation of 
gallant gentlemen whose countrywoman I am, for 
once to hear a woman's pleading on the subject. Not 
because I* 'deserve more at their hands than other 
women. Well I know, on the contrary, how many 
hundreds, infinitely better than I — more pious, more 
patient, and less rash under injury — have watered their 
bread with tears ! My plea to attention is, that in 
pleading for myself I am able to plead for all these 
others. Not that my sufferings or my deserts are 
greater than theirs, but that I combine, with the fact 
of having suffered wrong, the power to comment on 
and explain the cause of that wrong, which few 
women are able to do. 

" For this I believe God gave me the power of 
writing. To this I devote that power. I abjure all 
other writing till I see these laws altered. I care not 
what ridicule or abuse may be the result of that 
declaration. They who cannot bear ridicule and abuse 
are unfit and unable to advance any cause ; and once 
more I deny that this is my personal cause — it is the 
cause of all the women of England. If I could be 
justified and happy to-morrow, I would still strive and 
labour in it ; and if I were to die to-morrow, it would 
still be a satisfaction to me that I had so striven. 
Meanwhile my husband has a legal lien on the copy- 
right of my works. Let him claim the copyright of 
this!" 



This was her " Letter to the Queen " — a very clever 
arraignment of the Chancellor's Bill, both for what it 
proposed and for what it left undone. It struck so hard, 
in fact, at some of that gentleman's ponderous utter- 
ances in the debate of 1854 as to call forth a rueful 
protest from him when he next opened his mouth on 



248 "ENGLISH LAWS FOR WOMEN" [chap, xix 

the subject. Lord Cranworth had remarked in defence 
of that part of his Bill which denied divorce to a 
woman for mere infidelity of the husband, that if a 
woman could divorce on such small ground, a man 
who for some reason wished his wife to divorce him 
had only to be a little profligate to get his freedom 
at his wife's expense. This expression, " a little 
profligate," was made such unsparing use of that 
the unfortunate victim was finally moved to deny he 
ever said it, Hansard's record of his speech to the 
contrary. 

In this later pamphlet Mrs. Norton went over all 
the ground already covered by her " English Laws," 
drawing freely, as usual, from her own experience, but 
with much more restraint and reserve of personal 
detail, as befitted a work for the general public, which 
the first, by the way, was not. It is interesting to find 
a letter of Lord Brougham's about it. 

'■^ Decetnber 1855. 
" It is as clever a thing as ever was written, and it 
has produced great good. I feel certain that the Law 
of Divorce will be much amended, and she has greatly 
contributed to it." 

Not only the Law of Divorce, but Lord Cranworth's 
Bill to amend the Law of Divorce was much amended 
in the next Parliamentary session. The question of 
divorce and remarriage is still open ; the forces that 
oppose or approve it are still so actively engaged that 
the discussions on the Bill during this session are still 
unusually interesting ; and no speech on the subject 
is more interesting than Lord Lyndhurst's. 

Lord Lyndhurst was by this time a very old man, 
so infirm that he had to be brought to the Lords 
when he attended in a wheeled chair. A quaint little 
picture of himself and his old friend and rival, 
Brougham, about this time is found in Morley's " Life 
of Gladstone." 



1855-6] LORD LYNDHURST 249 

" A most interesting conversation with these two 
wonderful old men at eighty and eighty-six respect- 
ively (it was two years later than the time of the 
Divorce Bill), both in the fullest possession of their 
faculties — Brougham vehement, impulsive, full of ges- 
ticulation, and not a little rambling ; the other calm 
and clear as a deep pool upon rock. Brougham at 
last used these words : ' I tell you what, Lyndhurst, 
I wish I could make an exchange with you. I would 
give you some of my walking power, and you should 
give me some of your brains.' Mr. Gladstone adds 
his opinion that the compliment was the highest he 
ever knew to be paid by one human being to another." 

Lord Lyndhurst's old friendship with Mrs. Norton 
never shows itself to better effect than on this occa- 
sion when, in several long speeches of more than his 
usual graceful, limpid eloquence, he makes open use 
of her pamphlet, quoting, or it must be reading, 
passages from it, so identical are the extracts from 
his speech in Hansard with the original ; and finally 
offering a series of amendments covering many of the 
points where Mrs. Norton had found the Bill especially 
deficient. 

Many of these amendments, especially those affect- 
ing a married woman's legal status apart from her 
husband, were accepted by the first-mover of the 
Bill rather under protest as beyond the scope of the 
original measure, as was perhaps the truth. But 
the trend of public opinion was just then too strong 
to be resisted. During the session of 1856, for 
instance, the Lower House was bombarded by more 
than seventy petitions for the improvement of the law 
as it affected women ; one of these signed, it is said, 
by more than three thousand names, " among whom 
were ladies who had made the present epoch remark- 
able in the annals of literature," to quote the words 
of the M.P. who had been deputed by these same 
ladies to introduce their petition to the House. 

The Bill passed — not that year indeed, but the next — 

32 



250 "ENGLISH LAWS FOR WOMEN" [chap, xix 

in spite of the steady opposition of all the bishops, 
especially the Bishop of Oxford, and the Roman 
Catholic element in the Lords, and Mr. Gladstone's 
High-Church stand against it in the Commons. It 
went into effect, January i, 1858, and is still the law 
of England in matters matrimonial. With its really 
great reforms, the doing away with divorce by special 
Act of Parliament, and with the cumbrous and expen- 
sive machinery of "Doctors' Commons," it would be 
absurd and untrue to say that Mrs. Norton had any- 
thing to do. This was indeed a measure so sharply 
demanded by the time that even a great war could not 
delay it. 

But the Bill contained a whole cluster of lesser 
reforms which, as Lord Cranworth complained, were 
really outside the scope and plan of the original 
measure, but which make the Marriage Act of 1857 a 
sort of Bill of Rights for married women. 

By Clause 21, for instance, a wife deserted by her 
husband may be protected in the possession of her 
earnings from any claim of her husband upon them. 

By Clause 24 the new Court may direct payment of 
separate maintainence to a wife or to her trustee. 

By Clause 25 a wife may inherit and bequeath 
property like a single woman. 

By Clause 26 the wife separated from her husband 
is given the power of contract and suing, and being 
sued in any civil proceeding. 

With all these reforms it is quite fair to believe that 
Mrs. Norton had a great deal to do, to believe even 
that without her eager crusade of tongue and pen to 
advance them, the Bill would have gone through 
without them, and the many women who have since 
benefited by them would have gone on, it may be 
for many years — for these reforms are slow in coming 
— suffering injustice without them. 

It is strange to think how soon these services have 
been forgotten, how entirely Mrs. Norton's name until 
very lately has been left out of the list of women to 



1858] HER CLAIM UPON WOMEN'S GRATITUDE 251 

whom other women should be grateful. And yet one 
would think that in that list, by almost any measure 
of practical achievement her name ought to stand 
high, especially if we add the Infant Custody Bill to 
the account we have just enumerated. 



CHAPTER XX 

BRINSLEY's marriage — A LONDON SEASON 

George Norton had restored his wife's allowance 
some time before Lord Cranworth's Divorce Bill had 
created a Court which might on her appeal have 
obliged him to do so ; but he still continued his 
dispute about the amount, how much, or rather how 
little he might fairly pay her ; and we can feel the 
exasperation of his wife's temper over his endless 
procrastinations and objections, in the following letter 
written by her to her husband's legal adviser, Sir 
Fitzroy Kelly. 

" Sunday. 

" Dear Sir Fitzroy, 

" I will not say ' Yes.' I say * No,' most ener- 
getically to any proposal of shifting the miserable 
allowance of ;^400 a year. 

" It is the minimum of his own proposals (shifting 
and uncertain), spreading over twenty years, offered 
before he had half what he has now. In short, I 
won't ; and there is an end of it. This is final. The 
Duke of Newcastle is my trustee. 

" I add this (as Mr. Norton always thinks time an 
utterly unimportant matter) : that my bargain about 
my house is null and void if not complete by 
Christmas ; and that I shall accordingly complete it 
at all risks ; and that my publisher, who originally 
offered me ;^i,ooo for my book for eight years' copy- 
right, has sent an offer, signed, for ^i,6oo, the copy- 

252 



1854] LETTER TO SIR FITZROY KELLY 253 

right to return to me at the end of four years, and 
leave to publish in numbers, so as to control it for a 
while. That I could do this, and then get more from 
the law courts than ever Mr. Norton offered, is to 
me a matter of moral certainty. 

" He may therefore do as he likes. The position of 
my son Brinsley, and the exasperation I feel at the 
stupid haggling which always goes on, makes it really 
not worth the toss of the dice which I do — the 
temptation to me being as strong as ever temptation 
was to human soul, to show him up — and the whole 
scheme of hypocrisy and pretence from the beginning 
to the end — towards his wife and sons. 

" I am very sorry. I cannot write patiently ; I 
begin by wishing to avoid, as you say, the inutilities 
of these hard phrases, but 1 cannot. When I think of 
his absurd struggle, with his income, still to leave 
himself a loophole not to continue paying the fraction 
out of it of a hundred pounds quarterly to the mother 
of his sons, he having my portion from my father of 
;^i,5oo, besides all his own resources. 

" With regret for my angry diffuseness, unconquered 
because unconquerable, 

" Believe me, 

" Yours truly, 

"Car. Norton." 

In the summer of 1854, shortly after the close of 
the Parliamentary session, she was recalled to Italy 
by the marriage of her son Brinsley to Maria Chiara 
Elisa Federigo, a young Italian lady, with whom he 
had fallen violently in love during his residence at 
Naples. 

He could have found no more faithful or devoted 
wife. But the prospect of realising the promise of 
his early youth was doomed, for his health failed, 
and for the remainder of his life he was practically 
an invalid, and to a considerable extent dependent on 
his mother. 

During the month of September, after his marriage, 
his mother made the acquaintance, in Venice, of Lady 
Eastlake, who wrote : 



254 BRINSLEY'S MARRIAGE [chap, xx 

" Several evenings we went to the Piazza to listen 
to the band and gaze at the moonlight on St. Mark's, 
which looks as if made of silver and gold. Mrs. 
Norton generally joined us there, and I studied her. 
She is a beautiful and gifted woman ; her talents are 
of the highest order, and she has carefully cultivated 
them,, has read deeply, has a fine memory, and wit only 
to be found in a Sheridan. No one can compare with 
her in telling a story, so pointed, so happy, and so 
easy ; but she is rather a professed story-teller, and 
brings them in, both in and out of season, and gener- 
ally egotistically. Still she has only talents ; genius 
she has nothing of, or of the genius nature ; nothing 
of the simplicity, the pathos, the rapid changes from 
mirth to emotion. 

" No, she is a perpetual actress, consummately 
studying and playing her part, and that always the 
attempt to fascinate — she cares not whom. 

" Occasionally I got her to talk thinkingly, and then 
she said things which showed great thought and 
observation, quite oracular and not to be forgotten. 
I felt at first that she could captivate me, but the 
glamour soon went off. If intellect and perfect self- 
possession and great affected deference for me could 
have subjugated me, I should have been her devoted 
admirer." 

One is always running across this half-expressed 
arraignment of a manner too gracious, too eager to 
please, to be quite approved by those for whom reserve 
and restraint are the only sure tests of genuineness. 

A letter from Mrs. Norton to Hayward, written 
from Paris three months later in the same year, is not 
without those rapid changes from mirth to emotion, 
that pathos which Lady Eastlake has taken for proof 
of the genius nature, and declared her so entirely 
lacking in : 

" Paris, December 8, 1854. 

" My dear Avocat, 

" I do assure you I have seldom been so glad of 
any piece of news as to hear that you were to have the 



1854-5] LETTER TO HAYWARD 255 

Secretaryship of the Poor Law Board. As a recog- 
nition of abihty and power to serve, it is pleasanter 
even than as a recognition of past services, in a 
different and political literary way, and I am sure no 
man ever deserved more from his friends, either for 
his energy in their behalf or the patience and gener- 
osity in all matters concerning himself. I suppose it 
is a very * hard place,' as the maids say ; but you have 
spirit and energy for anything, and have proved your- 
self labour-proof, a veritable salamander in the hot 
forge of hard work. All the better, too, is it that 
what you have at last been offered falls in with what 
you have written and occupied yourself about, as 
there can be none of the discontented growling which 
generally attends like a Greek chorus on occasions of 
anybody getting anything. 

" As to my return, I linger, I scarcely know why, 
in the conviction that I shall only be tormented, 
without the balance of friends having time for me and 
my small drawing-room, or of my sisters being in 
town, and the belief that every one will disperse after 
a few days of Parliament. I have nothing here except 
the sort of dark security from trouble the mole has, 
who is underground, instead of ferreting about where 
a trap may pinch his neck and squeeze his bead eyes 
out of his head. (N.B. Not that my eyes are ' bead ' 
eyes.) I meant to have gone home the week after I 
arrived here. 

" I am vexed to hear poor accounts of the Duke ot 

Newcastle's health. I wrote to him. I daresay he 

will hardly have time to read my letter. 

" I scrawl yet another line, and say that poor Lady 

Ellis seemed very anxious about Sir Henry, who has 

taken drearily the news of Lockhart's death. 

" Yours ever truly, 

"C. Client." 

From Paris she went to Ireland to be with her sister, 
Lady Dufferin, where we hear of her early in 1855, 
in one of Lady Dufferin's letters : 

" We had two clever professors from the * Godless 
College ' at Belfast staying with us [at Clandeboye] 
last night. One had a wife with him to take care of 



256 BRINSLEY'S MARRIAGE [chap, xx 

him, but the other, being defenceless, was instantly 
spiflicated by Caroline, whom we set at him, having 
no other way of amusing him, with permission to do 
her worst. The poor man was bowled over like a rabbit 
before he knew where he was, and is gone home in 
a frenzy of admiration ' of that remarkable woman.* " 

She was by this time fifty years old, old enough, 
one would think, to have begun to find out that her 
power of " bowling men over like rabbits " was not to 
last for ever ; old enough to look back with a kind of 
impersonal amusement upon her beautiful youth. 
Indeed, there is something of this tone in a little letter 
written to Hayward in 1856 with reference to a new 
book of his, " Biographical and Critical Essays," which 
contained, discreetly veiled, a mention of herself at a 
dinner in Hayward's own chambers — the very dinner, 
in fact, which 1 have already described — just on the 
eve of her great break with her husband : 

** Ho ! Was it I who sounded so pretty in my one 
string of pearls ? I was wondering who it could be 
among your large-eyed Queen Bees ; but they have 
more pearls, and were not there." 

She goes on rather sadly, however : 

" My novel stands still. I am worried and bothered 
about my second son, and I can't sit at my desk like 
a tranquil author. 

" I think the Government will crawl on and dry 
their wings like flies who have been rescued from the 
cream-jug till some stronger catastrophe cuts them off. 

*' Cantillon Keir wrote me that he was inspecting 
cattle at Buchanan by way of change. He stoops too 
much over his papers for health. I never saw such 
an attitude, except when Lord Nugent used to mimic 
a crow getting worms out of frosty ground — a piece 
of mimicking which he was fond of exhibiting in the 
* social hour' of his frequent unbending from cares oi 
State. 

** Yours most truly, 

•* C. Client." 



1855] LETTER TO HER SISTER 257 

The following letter is dated from Paris, where we 
find her with increasing frequency after the transfer 
of her eldest son from Naples to the French capital : 

^^ Monday, September 3, 1855. 

" Dearest Georgie, 

" Where are you, and what chance of Scotland ? 
I am very uncertain in my projects. Fletcher is not at 
all well— the worse instead of the better of his cure, 
and I think down-hearted at the doctor telling him his 
cough would remain, do what he would. Brin is at 
Florence. I have not yet heard of her [his wife's] 
confinement, which should be now taking place. 

" Paris is so full, and so dear that it is abominable ; 
the Emperor very boastful and crowy. 

*' I went to see old Dejazet, her little feeble old legs 
dressed in blue breeches and her sweet little trilling 
but cracked voice singing military canzonets in The 
Boyhood of Napoleon. She is, I believe, a great- 
grandmother ; so runs the world away. 

" I have been, however, little amused and anxious 
about Penny [Fletcher], who is sadly overworked, and 
being of a facile disposition all the others skip away 
(five away out of a staff of eight), and all the responsi- 
bility with Penny, as he is the chief at present ; even 
Cowley only comes into Paris from Chantilly to set 
tasks. 

"The harvest is bad, and all very dear — the luxury 
of manufactures quite beyond belief A swarm and 
glitter make up Paris ; how long it can last is another 
thing. A great deal will be cleared by the innkeepers 
during this Exhibition, but the crowd of visitors do not 
buy much, they tell me. 

" Lucie Gordon is here staying with a Hindoo envoy. 
I met Victor Comins and Alfred de Vigny there. I 
laughed at one answer. One of the guests said to 
the Hindoo, ' Do you in your country accept the 
Mahomedan belief in the cow?' 'We do note; we 
do note beleefe in the cow, bote there is greete beleefe 
in the bull, and he is moche beloved amongst us in 
consequence.'" 

Even the funny story at the end does not quite 
do away with the melancholy impression left by this 

33 



258 A LONDON SEASON [chap, xx 

letter ; but we are to have one more shining vision 
of Mrs. Norton before she goes down at last into 
the sad change of old age. 

In 1858 the historian Motley was in London. He 
was at Lady Stanley's at one of Thackeray's lectures 
on " The Four Georges." 

" After the lecture was over I expected to slip away 
unnoticed, but Lady Stanley came to me and talked 
with great kindness, and introduced me to several 
persons, all of whom said I was no stranger, or words 
to that effect. Then Lady Airlie said to me, * Mrs. 
Norton wishes to make your acquaintance.' 

** I turned and bowed, and there she was, looking 
to-day almost as handsome as she has always been. 
She is rather above middle height. In her shawl and 
crinoline of course I could not pronounce upon her 
figure. Her face is certainly extremely beautiful. 
The hair is raven black — violet black, without a thread 
of silver ; the eyes very large, with dark lashes, and 
black as death ; the nose straight, the mouth flexible 
and changing, with teeth which in themselves would 
make the fortune of an ordinary face. Such is her 
physiognomy ; and when you add to this extraordinary 
poetic genius, descent from that famous Sheridan who 
has made talent hereditary in his family, a low, sweet 
voice and a flattering manner, you can understand how 
she twisted men's heads off and hearts out ; we will 
not be particular how many years ago. 

" She said, ' Your name is upon every lip.' I blushed 
and looked like a donkey. She added, ' It is agree- 
able, is it not ? ' I had grace enough to add, ' You 
ought to know, if any one.' And then we talked of 
other things. 

*' She told me she should be happy to see more of 
me. A day or two afterwards, accordingly, I went to 
call on her. She received me with great kindness, 
and was very agreeable. She has a ready, rapid way 
of talking, alludes with perfect aplomb to her inter- 
minable quarrel with Mr. Norton. She spoke of her 
two sons, one of whom is heir to a peerage and the 
other to beggary. She showed me a photo of this 
second one, who is evidently her darling, and who by 




p. 258J 



MKb. Nuklu.N. 
From a drawing by Mrs. Munro-Ferguson. 



i8s8] LADY SEYMOUR 259 

way of improving his prospects in life married a year 
ago a peasant girl of the island of Capri. Mrs. Norton 
does not even think her very handsome, but says that 
he imagines her perfection, particularly in her fancy 
costume. She knew Webster when he was here, and 
admired him very much. She is also very intimate 
with the Queen of Holland. I do not know that I 
have much more to chronicle of her conversation. 
She was always animated and interesting. My 
impressions of what she must have been were con- 
firmed ; certainly it was a most dangerous, terrible, 
beautiful face in its prime, and is very handsome 
still." 

In the letters of this sympathetic observer, who was 
afterwards to become not only a close friend but a 
close family connection, we meet Mrs. Norton again 
and again. He goes to Wimbledon to a breakfast 
party given by her sister, whom we have already 
learned to admire as Lady Seymour. 

" I found Mrs. Norton looking out for me, to intro- 
duce me to the Duchess of Somerset. This lady was, 
as you may recollect, the famous Queen of Beauty at 
the Eglinton tournament a good many years ago. Her 
daughter, Lady Ulrica St. Maur, is a very beautiful 
girl, closely resembling her mother, and obviously 
reproducing, perhaps in an inferior degree, what the 
Queen of Beauty of the tournament must have been in 
the blaze of her beauty. Lady Dufferin I hardly saw, 
although I was presented to her, for at the same 
moment the two sons of the house came up to me 
and began to talk. One of them, apparently about 
twenty, had just returned from India, where he had 
been, not with the army exactly, but a kind of spectator 
or volunteer. He seemed intelligent and very hand- 
some. The other. Lord Edward St. Maur, was a very 
bright, good-humoured lad of about fourteen. He said 
he had never travelled, but the very first tour he made 
he was determined should be to America. 

" I then went with Mrs. Norton into the salle a 
manger, and while we were there a plain, quiet, 
smallish individual in a green cutaway coat, large 
yellow waistcoat and plaid trousers, came in for some 



26o A LONDON SEASON [chap, xx 

luncheon, and Mrs. Norton instantly presented me to 
him. It was Lord John Russell." 

But at the end of a somewhat long conversation 
with the ex-Prime Minister, Mrs. Norton again took 
possession of him. 

" Nothing can be kinder than she," Mr. Motley 
asserts over and over again. " I feel as if I had known 
her for years, and I am satisfied she does not dislike 
me, or she would not be presenting me to everybody 
worth knowing. While I was talking to her she said : 
* Oh there is my lover, I must go and speak to him.* 
She then went up to a plain-looking benignant little 
old gentleman in a white hat and a kind of old-world 
look about him that seemed to require a pig-tail and 
white top boots. She whispered to him a moment, 
and he came forward beamingly, saying, ' Delighted, I 
am sure, to make Mr. Motley's acquaintance,' and 
shook me by the hand. This was the old Marquis of 
Lansdowne, late President of the Council." 

Mr, Motley goes on to describe a dinner at Lans- 
downe House. 

" The hostess is Lord Lansdowne's daughter-in- 
law. Lady Shelburne, who is pretty and pleasing. 
The company consisted of Mrs. Norton, Dean Milman 
and his wife, Lord Macaulay, Lady Dufferin and her 
son Lord Dufferin, Hayward, Miss Thellusson, and 
a gentleman whose name I did not hear — rather 
a small party for so large a room, I had on my left 
the young lady who declaimed so vigorously at Lady 
Stanley's, and who is intelligent and agreeable. On 
my right I had the good luck to have Lady Dufferin, 
whom before I had scarcely seen. She is extremely 
agreeable, full of conversation, with a charming 
manner, and has, or had, nearly as much beauty and 
almost as much genius as her sister, Mrs, Norton, with 
a far better fate. At table by wax-light she looked 
very handsome, with a wreath of white roses on her 
black hair : while her son, a very handsome youth of 
near thirty, sat near her looking like her brother. Old 
Lord Lansdowne sat beaming and genial in the centre 



i8s8] DINNER IN CHESTERFIELD STREET 261 

of his system, and had evidently acquired a good deal 
of fresh warmth and radiance from Mrs. Norton, who 
sat next him, and had been looking handsomer than 
I had ever seen her before. She was dressed in 
white, and from where I sat it would have required 
a very powerful telescope to discover that she had 
passed thirty. . . . After dinner the conversation 
was miscellaneous, but Hayward, who is a Quarterly 
reviewer of some reputation and a diner-out, got into 
an argument with Macaulay about sculpture and 
painting, and the whole apple-cart of conversation 
was upset." 

Mrs. Norton herself gave a dinner in her own little 
house in Chesterfield Street. 

" She made the dinner for me, but she was some- 
what disappointed in her company, several of the 
persons she wanted, among others Delane, having been 
engaged. The company consisted of the Marquis of 
Lansdowne, Lord Dufferin and his mother, Mr. 
Harcourt, Hayward the Quarterly reviewer and 
universal diner-out, the Earl of Gifford,^ and Sir 
Hamilton Seymour." 

Sir Hamilton Seymour was at the head of the British 
Legation at Lisbon when young Fletcher Norton was so 
ill there, and very kind to both mother and son on that 
unfortunate occasion. One is interested, therefore, to 
hear this much about him : 

" Sir Hamilton Seymour is not especially describ- 
able. He is obviously intelligent, caustic, and 
apparently good-humoured, and with a good deal of 
the usage du monde to be expected in a veteran diplo- 
matist. He is still comparatively young, but has laid 
himself up on a pension. I do not remember anything 
especially worth reporting of this dinner. The con- 
versation rolled on the accustomed wheels. But 

^ The Earl of Gifford was the nobleman whom Lady Dufferin 
married on his deathbed in 1862. Motley describes him as "about 
thirty-five, plain-looking, intelligent, spectacled, and a sculptor of 
remarkable talent." 



262 A LONDON SEASON [chap, xx 

where two such persons as Mrs. Norton and Lady 
Dufferin were present, you may imagine that it was 
not slow. Mrs. Norton, however, was a good deal 
indisposed, so much so as to be obliged to leave the 
table. She recovered, however, and remained till 
12.30 in her salon, at which time Hay ward and myself 
retired. The descriptions of Mrs. Norton have not 
been exaggerated. In the noon of her beauty she 
must have been something wondrous." 

At other times in this same little salon Mr. Motley 
came upon Stirling of Keir, whom he liked very much. 

"He is mild, amiable, bald-headed, scholarlike, an 
M.P., and a man of large fortune and ancient family." 

At another time he found Owen Meredith, or the 
old Marquis of Lansdowne toddled in and sat 
drinking in every word she said with great delight. 

She also made arrangements for him to meet that 
very great lady and her own good friend, the Duchess 
of Sutherland. 

" On Thursday I went with Mrs. Norton and Stirling 
by rail to Cliveden, I had received an invitation from 
the Duchess through Mrs. Norton, entirely unaware, 
as I had never been presented to her. I suppose you 
will like a description of her. There is something 
ver}'' plenteous and bountiful and sunny in her aspect. 
She is tall, and very large, and carries herself with a 
very good-natured stateliness. Her hair is blond- 
silvered, her features are large and well-chiselled, her 
smile is very beaming, and there is benevolence and 
sunshine in every look and word. With her ripe, 
autumnal, exuberant person and radiating expression, 
she looks like a personified Ceres, and ought always 
to be holding a cornucopia in her right hand." 

And not long after we find Mr. Motley at Frampton 
Court on a visit to Brinsley Sheridan, whom he finds 
to have " a good deal of the family fascination, being 
still very handsome, with a very winning address." 
By this time he had met all the survivors of that 



1858] FRAMPTON COURT 263 

brilliant, beautiful group of brothers and sisters which 
made such an impression on Fanny Kemble when she 
first saw them assembled together in Mrs, Norton's 
crowded little drawing-room at Storey's Gate a whole 
generation before. 

A new measure of impressions, new standards of 
comparison had come into use in the meantime, and 
we might have reason to mistrust the romantic de- 
scription of the gifted young actress in the reign of 
William IV, if we did not find it thus strengthened 
and confirmed by one of our own cool-blooded coun- 
trymen, a man whom we may still fairly think of as 
one of our own times. But so it is ; and indeed it is 
pleasant to be thus convinced that the tradition of the 
Sheridan wit and the Sheridan beauty is founded on a 
reality so strong, so vital, so unrelated to any changing 
fashion, that Mrs. Norton would seem just as enchant- 
ing, just as beautiful by the very last standards of the 
present as she did to her own generation, which is 
the past. 



CHAPTER XXI 

DEATH OF FLETCHER — " THE LADY OF LA GARAYE " — 
'* LOST AND SAVED " 

It is well that we should have this last radiant glimpse 
of Mrs. Norton before she entered into the shadow of 
her melancholy closing years. 

At the beginning of 1859 she was in Edinburgh 
during the celebration of the centenary of the birth of 
Robert Burns. The following letter is one she wrote 
to Hayward on that occasion : 

" Edinburgh, January 27, 1859. 

" Dear Avocat, 

" I send by Post a Scotsman, because there are 
some lines by me on Burns. Pray go to-and-fro 
praising them ! It did not occur to me to try for the 
' Crystal Prize,' but you see it is won by a woman — 
huzza ! Miss Isabel Craig is Scottish by birth, and was 
humble in position, having begun by making stocks 
for gentlemen's neckcloths. She afterwards wrote for 
Scotsman and Chambers, and was after that, female 
secretary to a Society — I think called, for the " Pro- 
motion of Social Science " — in Waterloo Place. 

'* I have long admired her, and read her poems to 
Lady Falkland when she was ill last summer. I hope 
you will like my lines ; on the Poet and Man — not 
Angel ! and so 1 say good-bye. 

" I missed the Ayr dinner, which I intended to have 
contemplated, by catching a cold walking in the wind 
and rain, in petticoats as short as Tam o'Shanter's 
Witch's sark. 

264 



1 8s 9] LETTER TO HAY WARD 265 

" Stirling also caught a bad cold (not from adopting 
a feminine costume) and was unable to attend the 
dinner. He meant to have gone to Ayr. 

" Edinburgh was very quiet on the * Centenary ' day. 
Even the enthusiasm of the Scotch is frappe a la 
glace. It is a new acquaintance, and they don't feel 
familiar enough with it to be jolly — and think of three 
thousand sitting down to Temperance tea-trays ! I'd 
as lief be a duck and sit in a pond with my chin upon 
duckweed. As it is, my chin is obliged to rest on 
the edge of a warm gruel-bowl, where with discon- 
solate snufflings I consider whether a hundred years 
hence (when it can do me no good) people will be 
reading * Hayward's biography of that remarkable 
woman,' and going to look at the turnpike gate on the 
road from Guildford to Shalford on the scene of in- 
spiration for the story of Rosalie. Adieu ! 

" The by - you - appreciated- and - indeed - over -com- 
plimented-and-patiently-indulged-but-by-many- others- 
not-sufficiently-valued Poetess, 

" Caroline Norton, 

alias 
" Caroline Client." 

But the autumn of 1859 brought the great catas- 
trophe of her later life — the death of her eldest son 
Fletcher of consumption, at the British Embassy in 
Paris, in the very room where his uncle Charles had 
died of the same disease twelve years earlier. 

The loss of this son was a crushing blow, from which 
she never really recovered. There still exists in the 
possession of one of her nieces a long letter she wrote 
on this occasion describing his last illness and last 
hours. The whole letter is as impressive as the genius 
of its writer could make it ; poignantly simple, yet full 
of that strange intensity of thought and sensation 
which comes to some minds in periods of exceptional 
suffering, as if each smallest sensation received, it 
may be, almost unconsciously at the time, had been 
burned into the brain by fire. 

She begins at the moment when, almost in his usual 
health, he left her in Chesterfield Street, where he had 

34 



266 DEATH OF FLETCHER [chap, xxi 

been passing his leave, to go back to Paris to prepare 
for liis departure to his new post at Athens, where his 
mother expected to accompany him. But he was ill 
when she rejoined him, almost immediately, in Paris. 
The letter goes on to describe her alarm at the change 
which had taken place in him during even those few 
days ; his exceeding weakness, which continued and 
increased and would not respond to treatment, till at 
last death came by the gradual extinction of all physical 
forces, all power to go on living. 

He said with a sigh one day, " I did not know it was 
so painful to die merely of exhaustion." 

Indeed, so intangible was his malady that it was 
some time before they resigned themselves to the 
knowledge that it was to be fatal, and for some time 
she went on bravely with what she afterwards de- 
scribed as the thing so difficult in this world as to 
be almost impossible — the task of amusing an invalid 
when you know (though the sufferer does not know) 
that he is dying. To quote again from the letter : 

" He was very fond of music, and on September 28 
(just a fortnight before he died) I got some Tyrolese 
to sing in an outer room, but he was already very 
weak, and one of their pieces was the imitation of the 
bells of a mountain village dying away in the dis- 
tance, and he was moved to tears, and I sent them 
away. The last music he ever heard was his brother's 
singing to the guitar, and even that was heard from 
the inner room, where Brin sat playing and singing 
as low as he could control his strong voice ; and even 
that tried Fletcher, so that we never did more in 
that way. 

" The morning of the day he died he said, ' I feel 
very strange.' 

*' I said, ' Worse, dear?' 

" He said, ' No, dear. Don't look at me with such 
kingdom-come eyes. I only feel strange. There is 
no other way of expressing it.' 

'* 1 said to Dr. Chepmell (who stayed with him ,most 



1859] HIS LAST HOURS 267 

anxiously and kindly), ' If he does not rally to-day, he 

will never rally at all.' 

" Dr. Chepmell said, * It is a critical day.* 

" I afterwards learned that he had said Fletcher 

would not live forty-eight hours." 



But it seemed to come suddenly at last. 

Not only his brother, but his father had been sent 
for as soon as his condition became alarming, and were 
with him when he died ; and his mother again saw her 
husband, whom she had met last in court, when she 
had hardly been able to bear it because in his 
eagerness for his own defence he had come and sat 
down beside her as near as the skirting-board of the 
court would allow. He was much nearer now, 
kneeling with bowed head on the other side of his 
son's couch, where Fletcher lying, with his head on 
his mother's shoulder, could see and speak to him. 
Almost the last words the young man said were 
addressed to him, ** Dear father." 

Mrs. Norton goes on : 

"Towards evening he said, ^Quelle etrange nuitf 
Then after a silence, * I do not see you — any of you — 
dear ones. But 1 see, oh! what is it 1 see? So 
many — so many — so beautiful. Beautiful.' It is im- 
possible for words to describe, or for those who saw 
it ever to forget, the wonderful radiance of his face 
while he said this, or the expression of earnest 
ecstasy in the beautiful eyes that no longer saw the 
things of earth. No picture of saints and martyrs 
that I ever beheld equalled the intense beauty or 
rapt look of his countenance. He said in a soft, sad 
tone, * Mother.' That was the last word he ever 
spoke. 

"We could scarcely tell when he died, but the 
restlessness, the sadness, and the ecstasy all passed 
out of his face, and there was nothing but peace ; and 
we had only to close his beautiful, soft eyes, that from 
the hour they opened on this world had never looked 
hardly, or scornfully, or unkindly on any human 
being. I am thankful, when so many women have 



268 DEATH OF FLETCHER [chap, xxi 

soldier sons dying far away from them, that I was per- 
mitted to witness this blessed, gentle creature go from 
us in such peace. ' The coffin rested the night before 
it was carried to England to be buried, at the Church 
of the Madeleine in Paris, where he used to attend the 
service on Sundays.' It was transported next day 
to England, to Kettlethorpe, in Yorkshire. He lies 
buried there now, in the same grave with my little 
Willie, who died years ago from the effects of a fall 
from his pony. A chapel which formerly stood on 
Wakefield Bridge, in memory of the young Duke of 
York, who was killed there in 1460, and which 
Mr. Norton had formerly bought and had removed 
to his grounds, was hung with black to receive 
the coffin previous to interment. And it was carried 
round the little lake over the green sward without 
the sound of a footfall, or any sound but the singing 
of the birds in a tiny island in the lake, opposite 
the door of the chapel. On the stone that covers him 
is engraved, ' Parva Domus, Magna Quies.' 

" A more patient sufferer never went to his rest ; 
nor did parents ever lose a son of more promise. 
He was fond of his profession, understood many 
foreign languages, wrote well in verse and prose, but 
was more humble and diffident than any one I ever 
was acquainted with. We lived together in many 
different countries, and wherever he once lived I am 
sure he has left friends who will regret him and be 
sorry for our loss." 

Many months after Fletcher's death she wrote again 
on the same subject, but this time in poetry. In her 
own words about one of her own heroines, "she 
lamented in verse when she ceased to lament in tears. 
Ah ! believe, she lamented still." 

" In the Storm 

"/« Memory of My Son 
"Written at Taymouth, Perthshire. 

" If, going forth in the snow and the hail, 
In the wind and the rain, 
On the desolate hills, in the face of the gale, 
I could meet thee again, 



1859] "IN THE STORM" 269 

" Ah ! with what rapture my bosom would beat 
And my steps onward pass, 
With a smile on my lip, while the thin driving sleet 
Soaked through the grass. 

" But never — the hour can never have birth 
That would gladden me thus ; 
There are meetings, and greetings, and welcomes on earth, 
But no more for us. 

" No more shall thy letters come in with the morn, 
Making sunshine for hours, 
With thoughts of an innocent tenderness born, 
Or a spray of dried flowers ; 

•' With praises whose love used to cheer and to bless. 
Running through every line ; 
And fond closing words that felt like a caress 
Which thy soul gave to mine. 

" The grey clouds are scudding in vaporous shrouds 
O'er a sky dark as lead : 
I think of the tombs that are planted in crowds — 
Pale homes of the dead. 

" I think does the same wind that sweeps by me now, 
As it shivers and moans, 
Thrill the pools in that graveyard of half-melted snow. 
By the moss-dripping stones ? 

" And I cry in my anguish, ' Appear, as in life — 
And my soul shall not fear ; 
Pass over this sea of my trouble and strife.' 
But the winds only hear. 

"The rush of the wild river rolling along 
Is loud in my ear — 
The wind through the beech-trees is heavy and strong. 
But that sound cometh clear. 

"The turbulent waters drive on in their force. 
Like the thoughts in my breast — 
But the stones lying deep in the torrent's wild course, 
Say : ' Under is rest.' 

" Under, deep under ! But lo ! While I dream, 
From a vanishing cloud 
The pale moon looks forth, with her strange, tranquil gleam, 
Like a ghost in its shroud. 



2 70 DEATH OF FLETCHER [chap, xxi 

" And I think of the rest in the dark waters near, 
To its stony bed given ; 
And I think of that light shining gentle and clear ; 
' There is rest too, in heaven.' 

" Till the wild storm subsiding, forth comes by the moon 
One unrising star ; 
Is there rest? but the earth seems so near, as I swoon, 
And the heavens so far ! " 

She writes to her sister from Dinan, in Brittany, 
where she spent the first months after her bereave- 
ment: 

^^ December 12. 

" Dear Georgie, 

"Thank you for writing to me about Nell, I 
am sorry I did not tell you I was here ; but I am 
more dead than alive half my time, and the other 
half I spend on Brin's little ones and their odd home 
here. . . . 

" This place is strange and beautiful. A small town 
built on a height with a bastion all round, and immense 
towers and gateways ; the most lovely valley, ' la 
vallee des Noyers,' lies outside, and you seem looking 
down into another world as you look into it over the 
rampart wall outside the church. But I have been so 
ill here I have scarcely seen anything. Brin has a 
comfortable, though rather shut-in lodging, with a 
woman who understands embroidery for the priests' 
vestments in the churches of Brittany. 

" He is poorly, irritable, and dejected, and Mariuccia 
very anxious. The children are well, poor darlings ! 
and come eagerly of a morning to the little boarding- 
house just outside the town where I live. 

" I am going away now, if I am well enough for the 
journey. I shall be glad to know poor dear Nell safe 
home — not selfishly, but for her. I see you think it 
would comfort me, but there are strokes for which 
there is no comfort ; no one can come or go now that 
will make any difference to me. 

" ' The stately ships move on 
To their haven under the hill ' ; 



i86o-6i] "THE LADY OF LA GARAYE" 271 

but it is ended for me in this world ; all gleams of 
better days were with him, and have gone out into 
darkness." 

There is a little note from her to her publishers, 
written on her return to England, which I give, be- 
cause it shows how utterly she had let go life's weary 
tasks for a time after her son's death, but also how 
soon she resumed them. 

"Chesterfield Street, Mayfair, 
^^ February 6, i860. 

'* Gentlemen, 

" I will correct the brief biography I found lying 
here on my return to England, if you will inform me 
whether the book is already printed off or not, as 1 
see the date of your letter is December last. 

" Yours obli'd, 
"C.N. 

" I cannot say the notice you sent is correct. 

"To Messrs. Richard Griffin & Co., Publishers^ 
"Ave Maria Lane." 



Mrs. Norton's last long poem, "The Lady of La 
Garaye," the only one of her works which is easily 
attainable to-day, was published by Macmillan late 
in 1 861. In the first edition both frontispiece and 
vignette on the title-page were hers — not only her 
sketches, but done by her on the wooden block from 
which the impression was printed. The portrait of 
the Lady of La Garaye is a copy of an authentic picture 
which Mrs. Norton had found in one of the religious 
houses of Dinan, the sketch of the ruined chateau and 
its ivy-covered gateway having been made originally 
by herself during the summer after her son's death, 
part of which she spent in Brittany. 

In regard to the poem itself, she hastens to inform 
us in her introduction : 

" Nothing is mine but the language in which it is 



272 "THE LADY OF LA GARAYE " [chap, xxi 

told. 1 have respected that mournful romance of real 
life too much to spoil its lessons with any poetical 
licence." 

It is the story of a noble lady, hopelessly crippled 
by a fall from her horse in the first years of her 
marriage, and of all the long remainder of her life spent 
by her and her devoted husband in the care of those 
sick and crippled like herself. In its day it was much 
admired and much read, and is still remembered, if 
not read, by those on whose youth it made its first 
impression. Its superiority over her other efforts in 
narrative and descriptive poetry is so marked as to 
put her quite in another class of poetic achievement 
from that which, without it, she would be qualified to 
occupy. 

We find in it, indeed, all her old faults, her diffuse- 
ness of style and superabundance of ornament ; all her 
old limitations towards ultimate truth and speculative 
thought ; but never more pardonably than in its pages, 
because the story itself and its surroundings were 
such as gained rather than lost by the wealth of 
radiant imagery which came almost too easily at her 
bidding, while the story's lesson, that noble con- 
clusion of a broken and tragic youth, was the one 
of all others she was most competent to treat — the 
one most fit to inspire all that was lovely and beautiful 
in her eager fancy. 

Every page of the poem is a confession of her own 
deepest beliefs, her strongest consolations, her last 
entrenched illusions. And reading it, we are still 
amazed by the unextinguishable youthfulness of this 
spirit, the hold it still retains upon joy and hope, and 
all the nobler pleasures of sense and emotion, in spite 
of the long struggle her life had been between her 
own insistent desire for happiness and the fate which 
almost from the beginning seemed to have put all 
happiness beyond her grasp. 

The poem is dedicated to Lord Lansdowne. 



i86ij DEDICATION 273 

" Friend of old days, of sufifering, storm, and strife, 
Patient and kind through many a wild appeal ; 
In the arena of thy brilliant life 
Never too busy or too cold to feel : 

"To thee I dedicate this record brief 
Of foreign scenes and deeds too little known ; 
This tale of noble souls who conquered grief 
By dint of tending sufferings not their own. 

"Thou hast known all my life : its pleasant hours, 
How many of them have I owed to thee ? 
Its exercise of intellectual powers. 
With thoughts of fame and gladness not to be. 

"Thou knowest how Death for ever dogged my way, 
And how of those I loved the best, and those 
Who loved and pitied me in life's young day. 
Narrow and narrower still the circle grows. 

" Thou knowest — for thou hast proved— the dreary shade 
A first-born's loss casts over lonely days : 
And gone is now the pale, fond smile, that made 
In my dim future, yet, a path of rays. 

" So that my very soul is wrung with pain. 
Meeting old friends whom most I love to see. 
Where are the younger lives, since these remain ? 
I weep the eyes that should have wept for me. 

" But all the more I cling to those who speak 
Like thee, in tones unaltered by my change ; 
Greeting my saddened glance, and faded cheek. 
With the same welcome that seemed sweet and strange 

" In early days : when I, of gifts made proud. 
That could the notice of such men beguile, 
Stood listening to thee in some brilliant crowd. 
With the warm triumph of a youthful smile. 

*' Oh, little now remains of all that was. 
Even for this gift of linking measured words. 
My heart oft questions, with discouraged pause. 
Does music linger in the slackened chords ? 

"Yet, friend, I feel not that all power is fled. 
While offering to thee, for the kindly years. 
The intangible gift of thought, whose silver thread 
Heaven keeps untarnished by our bitterest tears. 

35 



274 "THE LADY OF LA GARAYE " [chap, xxi 

" So, in the brooding calm that follows woe, 
This tale of La Garaye I fain would tell, 
As, when some earthly storm hath ceased to blow, 
And the huge, mounting sea hath ceased to swell : 

" After the maddening wrecking and the roar. 
The wild high dash, the moaning sad retreat, 
Some cold slow wave creeps faintly to the shore, 
And leaves a white shell at the gazer's feet. 

Another friend of Mrs. Norton's was quite as beauti- 
fully remembered in the same poem — Sidney Herbert, 

A short time after the great agitation of the Corn 
Laws in August 1846, Mr. Herbert had married 
Elizabeth, daughter of General Charles Ashe a Court, 
whom he had known as a child. Indeed, there is a 
story that while Miss a Court was still a little girl she 
had already made up her mind about the handsome 
lad whom she often saw at her father's place in 
Wiltshire, and openly announced that when she grew 
up she was going to marry " that boy." 

Mr. Herbert was Secretary of State at War while 
the British army was at the Crimea, and came in for 
a great deal of the blame showered upon the War 
Office for the breakdown of the British commissariat 
at that time. His tireless service during these trying 
years had seriously injured his health, but he had 
remained at his post, except for a few months when 
his friends were out of power, initiating and carrying 
out reforms which late experience had shown to be so 
necessary in the army, until he was suddenly struck 
down by Bright's disease and died in November 1861. 

" Even as I write," says Mrs. Norton, 

" Before me seem to rise, 
Like stars in darkness, well-remembered eyes. 
Whose light but lately shown on earth's endeavour. 
Now vanished from this troubled world for ever. 
, Oh, missed and mourned by many, I being one, — 

Herbert, not vainly thy career was run ; 
Nor shall Death's shadow, and the folding shroud, 
Veil from the future years thy worth allowed 



i86i] SIDNEY HERBERT 275 

Since all thy life thy single hope and aim 

Was to do good, not make thyself a name, — 

'Tis fit that by the good remaining yet. 

Thy name be one men never can forget. 

Oh, Eyes I first knew in our mutual youth, 

So full of limpid earnestness and truth ; 

Eyes I saw fading still, as day by day 

The body, not the spirit's strength, gave way ; 

Eyes that I last saw lifting their farewell 

To the now darkened window where I dwell, 

And wondered, as I stood there sadly gazing, 

If Death were brooding in their faint upraising ; 

If never more thy footstep light should cross 

My threshold stone — but friends bewail thy loss. 

And She be widowed young, who lonely trains 

Children that boast thy good blood in their veins ; 

Fair eyes, your light was quenched while men still thought 

To see those tasks to full perfection brought. 

Brave heart, true soldier's son ; set at thy post, 
Deserting not till life itself was lost ; 

Be thy sons like thee. Sadly as I bend 

Above the page, I write thy name, lost friend. 

With a friend's name this brief book did begin. 

And a friend's name shall end it : names that win 

Happy remembrance from the great and good ; 

Names that shall sink not in oblivion's flood. 

But with clear music, like a church bell's chime, 

Sound through the river's sweep of onward-rushing Time." 

The following years only brought new losses. The 
tragedy of old age, it would seem, had fairly begun 
for Mrs. Norton. There was much, however, besides 
the natural losses of old friends, the natural diminution 
of health and courage, to make these last twenty years 
of her life an even more melancholy struggle than any 
that had gone before them. 

In 1855 her first grandchild, Richard Norton, had 
been born at Capri; in 1856 came a little girl, Carlotta, 
and, by a strange irony of fate which had deprived 
her of the infancy of her own children, both boy and 
girl became at a very early age her especial possession, 
and she had again the care and companionship of 
young children at a time when such care and com- 



276 "LOST AND SAVED" [chap, xxi 

panionship is often a greater anxiety than a pleasure. 
There is no sign, however, that her grandchildren's 
residence with her was anything but a joy to Mrs. 
Norton. Till he was old enough to be sent to school, 
her grandson Richard slept in her own room, and both 
children were constantly with her. 

There is a little note written to her old friend, Sir 
Alexander Duff Gordon, which gives a characteristic 
glimpse of her at this time : 

" No, dear Sir Aleck. It went to Frampton to be 
signed ; I would it were a matter of indifference to me 
to get it ; but grandchildren now come chirping like 
birds to be fed, besides all former claims. 

I hope Lucie is better. I am never in town two days 
at a time, and have never got to Esher. 

" Yours most truly, 
" C. N." 

Early in 1863 she brought out the novel, " Lost and 
Saved," published by Messrs. Hurst & Blackett, on 
which she had long been at work, in which she had 
been so often interrupted since its first conception 
during one of her brief periods of calm happiness — a 
summer spent at Wiesbaden with her eldest son, 
Fletcher, shortly after the flattering reception of her 
" Stuart of Dunleath." 

Here, as usual, she had made new friends, among 
others the Earl of Essex, to whom we find her dedi- 
cating the novel when it finally appeared. For it was 
then and there, as she herself narrates in this same 
dedication, " while my boy and your girl rode laughing 
races through woods of Wiesbaden, and you and I took 
more cheerful walks than I can ever take again ; when 
your beautiful and pleasant sisters were ' new friends,' 
and we all hoped to make but one family," that the idea 
of this novel was born. 

By her own announcement, Beatrice, the heroine, 
is an attempt on her part — the result of many jesting 
conversations between this " new friend " and herself — 



1863] BEATRICE 277 

to make a woman's character on the lines Lord Essex 
professed most to admire. Whether by accident, or 
by a still more subtle connection of cause and effect, 
no other heroine of Mrs. Norton's so closely resembles 
herself as the heroine of " Lost and Saved." 

" She was quick, ardent, and sensitive ; capable of 
all sacrifice for those she loved ; capable of all energy 
for that which she desired to attain ; full of eagerness ; 
full of enthusiasm ; pitiful and tender. Something of 
a rarer earnestness was in her than in others, and 
warmed you, while she spoke, like a flame. It is in 
vain to argue the matter ; there is as much difference 
of sensation in different persons as there is difference 
in their physical strength or intellectual capacities. 
One can't draw, another can't sing, and a third can't 
feel. There are apathetic creatures, to whom passionate 
love, wild grief, aching compassion, are mysteries as 
great as magic. Disturbed, embarrassed, incredulous, 
with a strong repugnance to what they call a scene, 
they shrink like sea-anemones, and draw in the cold 
flabby feelers of their minds at any evidence of emotion 
in others. 

" Beatrice was the reverse of all this. She enjoyed 
more, she suffered more, she felt more than a great 
proportion of her fellow-creatures. Life thrilled 
through her, as you may see it thrill, in the delight 
of sunshine, through a butterfly's closed wings. And 
to such as she, in whom the visible world and the life 
of sensation predominate, the temptations of this world 
are the most powerful. Her heart ached, the tears 
rushed to her eyes at some touching picture or some 
mournful song. The breath of a warm spring day, 
the scent of flowers, the purple of the distant hills, 
the freshness of the waves dashing in upon the shore, 
filled her with vague yearning. 

" Such natures will not await the coming event ; 
they cannot watch the subtle alchemy of brooding 
days, even though the chance of a golden hour lie 
there. They are for ever wrestling before dawn with 
the dark angel of Destiny, reckless if their victory 
shall send them lamed and limping from Peniel." 

The avowed intention of the book was to show how 



278 "LOST AND SAVED" [chap, xxi 

sure such a creature was of coming to grief in the 
world Mrs. Norton herself knew best, the world of 
London society, 

" Where women with shallow feelings, who tread 
the paths of sin sure-footed as Spanish mules on the 
edge of the Cordilleras, are indescribably welcome ; 
and where stupid, honest Beatrices, with their pas- 
sionate affection and blind confidences in the base, and 
romantic notions of love and justice and universal 
sympathy are utterly abhorred." 

It is the story of a beautiful young girl, gradually 
entangled by a series of very plausible accidents, one 
of which is a mock marriage, into what is commonly 
known as a life of sin, as the mistress of a young man 
of high rank and the mother of his illegitimate child. 
Rather a hazardous situation, we must confess, and 
one needing careful treatment if it was to be accept- 
able by the standards laid down for English fiction 
during the reign of Queen Victoria ! We are not 
surprised, therefore, to find the book severely criticised 
as not fit to lie upon a lady's table. And, indeed, we 
are forced to admit that such criticism was not without 
a certain kind of justification. It was not so much 
that the heroine was neither wife nor maid through 
the greater part of the story. Treated with a proper 
discretion, the young mother whose hand shows no 
marriage-ring is not an unheard-of appearance in the 
pages of Victorian fiction. The trouble was that under 
Mrs. Norton's treatment the whole threadbare situation 
became alive, convincing, a thing of her own day, her 
own class, her own and others' observation ; and, as 
such, we can hardly wonder that it was judged unfit 
to be given to the reader for whom all English fiction 
of that day was especially prepared and adapted — the 
young unmarried girl. 

It was also said of it that the leading characters 
were, if not portraits, at least very intimate studies of 



1863] THE MARCHIONESS OF UPDOWN 279 

Mrs. Norton's own friends and acquaintances, espe- 
cially the Marchioness of Updown, the fat, vulgar, 
great lady, who serves as the principal victim of 
Mrs. Norton's lively wit. And this accusation is, no 
doubt, in some measure true, could not fail to be true 
with a writer like Mrs. Norton, in whom the power 
of creative imagination never approached the fineness 
of her observation, and whose peculiar genius lay in 
the force and vividness with which she put her own 
impressions into words. 

It is quite possible, therefore, that this same Mar- 
chioness of Updown was suggested, if not entirely 

inspired, by Lady , one of the clique at Court 

who did what they could to prevent Mrs. Norton 
from showing her face there again after the Melbourne 
scandal. 

She was safely off the stage of action at the time of 
the publication of " Lost and Saved." The lady is 
thus described in Mrs. Norton's lively pages : 

" Though her husband was neither wise nor great, 
but a fat, foolish man, with a meek, fidgety temper — 
and there are, as we know, no less than twenty-one 
marquises in the British Peerage — she somehow con- 
trived to be the greatest lady that ever was seen out of 
a fairy tale. Her sisters called her * the Marchioness,' 
as the servants did. Her husband called her ' the 
Marchioness.' It seemed as if there was no other 
Marchioness in the world. If there was a ball, party, 
or soiree to be given, her absence was as bitter as that 
of the hero of the old-fashioned song, ' Robin Adair.' 
If there was a procession, coronation, or festive cere- 
mony of any kind, the world stood on its axis till the 
Marchioness had a place assigned to her. She went to 
Court, not spangled with scattered diamonds, like the 
sky on a fine night, but crusted over with them, like 
barnacles on a ship's hull. Every year her arms were 
rounder, her bracelets larger, her figure more corpulent. 
Every year the sweep of her full drapery encroached 
more and more on the ground occupied by her scantier 
neighbours. Every year her step became more flat- 
footed and imperious. In England she shone with the 



28o "LOST AND SAVED" [chap, xxi 

splendour of a perpetual Catherine-wheel ; and abroad 
she represented, in the opinion of amazed foreigners, 
the style and condition of an English " Grande Dame," 

The book abounds with descriptions as amusing as 
the one just given. Its chief interest for us, however, 
is in the character of Beatrice. Dissimilar as was her 
story from Mrs. Norton's own, it yet affords many and 
many descriptions which could only have originated 
in Mrs. Norton's own experience. 

We see her with her own first child as she describes 
Beatrice — 

" Seated opposite to the nurse, who held him on her 
lap, practising one of Gordigiani's perfect ballads ; 
and smiling at him while she sang, fancying that even 
to him the melody gave pleasure." 

We see her struggling through one of her long, 
ungracious interviews with lawyers, 

" Proceeding with that rambling fluency which all 
women, even very intelligent women, employ in 
endeavouring to explain themselves on matters of 
business. Mr. Grey listened with increasing severity 
and disapprobation. Her occasional tears did not 
touch him ; her appealing looks, from time to time, 
when urging some especial point, only irritated him. 
This was neither the time nor place for such coquetry. 
He did not like such eyes." 

We get a glimpse of one of those fits of stormy 
passion which often compromised her own case and 
alienated her well-wishers in her own endless struggles 
against her husband's injustice; though here it is 
Beatrice she describes — 

"Resisting the truth till resistance was no longer 
possible, and then, when convinced that her visitor 
really was breaking to her some new dreadful phase 
in her life, she passed to the wildest frenzy of reproach 
to him personally, for being] the bearer of such ill- 



1863] "LOST AND SAVED" 281 

tidings. She positively stamped her foot as she bade 
the old soldier be gone and not insult her farther by his 
presence ; and finally, becoming apparently conscious 
of the ceaseless cries of little Frank, who wailed as all 
young children do at stormy speaking among their 
elders, she snatched the boy up as passionately as she 
had laid him down, strained him hard to her breast, 
and dropping back in her chair burst into sobbing 
tears. 

" Under that shower the General beat a rapid retreat, 
incensed and alienated ; thinking her wanting in 
dignity, modesty, and proper conduct, and resolving 
to communicate anything he had to say to her in 
writing. 

" But before the hot afternoon had waned away, a 
little note recalled him ; it said : 

" * Forgive my violence — I want to ask you one 
question, only one — and then I will give you no more 
trouble. I am very miserable — do come back to me.' " 

And there is a charming little hint of the author's 
practical experience as a woman earning her daily 
bread, and obliged to go often unattended : 

" It is a dream of romancists that your heroine's 
beauty cannot be seen without attracting as much 
attention as a comet. If a woman be modestly dressed, 
simple in manner, and obviously going about her own 
avocations, she may walk — I do not say through Paris, 
but be it said to the credit of Englishmen, certainly 
through any street in London — with perfect security. 
Beatrice Brooke was as beautiful a woman as could be 
seen or imagined ; but she reached Stratton Street 
without adventure and without remark beyond that 
passing glance which Moore and Byron have both 
commemorated in poetry as given to faces we some- 
times meet ' in the world's crowd,' and whose recurring 
loveliness comes back to us whenever we dream of 
beauty." 

I should not have given so many of these extracts if 
the book from which they are taken was more easily 
attainable. I could have given many more equally 

36 



282 "LOST AND SAVED" [chap, xxi 

vivid, equally illuminating both of the habit of mind 
and the actual experiences of the woman who wrote 
them. I have given enough, I hope, to convince those 
who are inclined to judge her novels as old-fashioned 
and out of date, that this one, at least, will well repay 
any reader who is fortunate enough to come across it ; 
fortunate I say, for like so much else she has written, 
it is so nearly out of print that it is almost by chance 
that one can obtain a copy of it. 



CHAPTER XXII 

LAST YEARS — DEATH OF GEORGE NORTON — SECOND 
MARRIAGE — DEATH 

Mrs. Norton's last long novel, " Old Sir Douglas," 
appeared in book form early in 1867, having come out 
first periodically in Macmillan' s Magazine^ reprinted 
for the American public in LitteWs Living Age. 
To those of the present generation v^ho were intro- 
duced to this story in the bound volumes of either 
of those periodicals, " Old Sir Douglas " is a very 
pleasant recollection. 

The book, however, does not bear rereading as 
well as her earlier stories. It is discursive, full of 
inconsistent and often sensational incident, gathered 
hurriedly, it would seem, out of the flotsam and jetsam 
of her own long experience, and put together in a rather 
palpable effort to interest and amuse. But even in " Old 
Sir Douglas " there are many charming and touching 
bits of description. The account, for instance, of the 
childhood of Sir Douglas and his brother, two little 
motherless Scottish boys brought up under the dominion 
of a harsh, unloving step-mother, has too much simi- 
larity with the fate of her own children not to have 
been written out of the very depths of her heart. The 
description of Naples, too, and of the poor wild lad 
who came to such grief there, has an added interest 
from Mrs. Norton's own associations with Southern 
Italy. 

283 



284 LAST YEARS [chap, xxii 

The book was to have been dedicated to Lady 
Dufferin, Mrs. Norton's favourite sister, but before 
it was finished Lady Dufferin had died of a long 
and painful illness, and the name of her son, instead 
of herself, appears on the first page. 

The death of this favourite sister was an irreparable 
loss to Mrs. Norton, though when Motley saw her a 
little later in the same year he found her upon the 
whole " in pretty good spirits and particularly 
agreeable." 

Mr. Motley's intimacy with the whole Sheridan 
connection had been confirmed and strengthened by 
the marriage of his second daughter, Mary, with a 
son of Mr. Brinsley Sheridan, and it was during one 
of his frequent visits to Frampton Court that he speaks 
thus of his old friend : 

" She continues to take it for granted that I am 
going to stay here as long as she does, and that I 
am to make a long visit at Keir, where she goes next 
month. I have undeceived her, but she continues to 
know best. Carlotta is here, and she trots about 
quietly and gently, and seems very obedient and 
well-disposed," 

These long autumn visits to Keir, where in later 
years Mrs. Norton was often accompanied by her 
grandchildren, had suffered no interruption by Mr. 
Stirling's marriage in 1865 with his distant cousin, 
Anna, third daughter of the Earl of Leven. In the 
same year Mr. Stirling had also succeeded to the 
title and estates of his mother's brother. Sir John 
Maxwell, and he is hereafter to be known in these 
pages as Sir William Stirling-Maxwell, 

Motley speaks pleasantly of Lady Anna Stirling' 
Maxwell : 

" I like Stirling's wife very much. She is decidedly 
handsome, with delicate, regular features, fair hair, and 
high-bred, gentle manners.' 



i868] LETTER TO HAYWARD 285 

He goes on in the same letter to describe a dinner 
at the StirHng-Maxwells', where he met Mrs. Norton 
and Anthony Trollope, among a number of greater and 
less celebrities. 

But from the time of Lady Dufferin's death till her 
own, the mention of ill-health and bad spirits becomes 
more and more frequent in her own letters. The 
following to Hayward is noticeable in this respect. 

" Frampton Coh-kt, January 1868. 

" Dear Avocat, 

" I get dreary in London, so fled back here 
where I am coated and packed in cotton. I have a 
constant pain in my side, and consider that I shall 
shortly be a Saint and a Martyr with a halo round 
my departed head ! 

" Your Buncombe article is most clear, spirited, and 
true, and I ran my eyes to the end with great 
eagerness. 

" The family say they never knew he had either wife 
or son ! or who the man is who has published the 
Memoir ! 

" I assure you it was not Lord Alvanley, but my 
brother Charlie, who made the jest (or jeii de mots) 
you quote, though immediately after, we heard it 
attributed (as all witty things were) to Lord Alvanley, 
and I said then, * How sure they were to give that to 
a noted wit, instead of you, Charlie.' 

** Some man (I can't recollect who) said with a 
stupid sneer, ' I'd be afraid even to leave my card 
on him, for fear he'd mark it' 

" * That would at least depend on whether he thought 
it a high honour,' Charlie said very quietly. 

" But it was said rather in reproof of the fling at a 
man who was down, as Lord R then was. 

" I have got * More about Junius' with me, and am 
entirely absorbed in considering the great mystery. 

" I shall be in town in February. Much remembrance 
from all here. 

" Yours ever truly, 

"C. Client." 

The Thomas Buncombe mentioned in this letter 
is the same whose appointment as one of Lord 



286 LAST YEARS [chap, xxii 

Durham's suite on his unfortunate Canadian embassy 
brought such criticism upon his chief because of his 
own rather dubious reputation, both socially and 
politically, at the time. Mrs. Norton's knowledge of 
him had begun years before, when he came under her 
spell as a good-looking young captain, dandy, and 
duellist, during the great struggle of the Whig ladies 
to attract young men from the Tory party to the 
ranks of Whiggism and Reform. 

She had become ver}'' large and heavy, and as she 
grew older had several serious falls, one of which, in 
the summer of 1869, was accompanied by a blow on 
the head, so severe as to delay the article she was at 
work on just then for Macmillan. 

The article in question she herself had proposed to 
write on the life and works of her dear friend Lady 
Duff Gordon, dead that same summer from con- 
sumption, in Cairo, far away from friends and country. 
The article appeared at last in September, full of 
affectionate appreciation of the writer and real regret 
for the woman whose nature in many things was 
not unlike her own. 

A personal letter to Lord Ronald Gower, a devoted 
younger son of the Duchess of Sutherland, tells of 
Mrs. Norton's grief for the death of a still closer and 
dearer friend : 



" If to have loved and admired your dear mother 
more than any one I ever met out of my own home 
circle, more than any one I ever knew except my sister 
Helen, could give me a place in her children's remem- 
brances, I can lay claim to such a recollection, even at 
this mournful and sacred time. However often one 
may have known a dear and famihar friend, I think 
there is always one occasion in which the face and 
form become, as it were, more visible to memory, as if 
the picture were taken then. I see for ever, in thinking 
of her, the sweet picture of her pitying face smilingly 
looking down on my boy, who was trying to thank her 
for all her goodness to me, and as she stood drawing 



1869] LETTER TO HAYWARD 287 

off a ring from her finger, which she gave to him, the 
very ideal of lovely kindness of soul. 

" I think of you all. I think especially of the dear 
Duchess of Argyll. I knew her best. 1 know what 
this blank in life must be, though surely no children 
of any mother that ever lived and died among them 
could feel more blessed assurance that home on earth 
was exchanged for home * eternal in the heavens.' " 

Lady Palmerston's death was the end of another 
friendship, not so close indeed as Mrs. Norton's rela- 
tion to the Duchess of Sutherland or Lady Duff 
Gordon, but very kind, very constant, and of long 
duration, reaching back as it did to a past before 
Lady Palmerston's second marriage, when she was 
still Lady Cowper, and her favourite brother was still 
William Lamb, with all his high office still to come 
to him. 

A very charming notice of Lady Palmerston's life 
and character appeared in The Times a short time 
after her death, written by Abraham Hayward, who 
straightway sent the paper to his old friend and hers, 
Mrs. Norton, who was just then in Switzerland staying 
with the sister of her late brother-in-law. Lord Gifford. 
The following is Mrs. Norton's reply : 

"Villa Lammermoor, Geneva, 

''^Friday, September 24, 1869. 

" Dear Avocat, 

'• Thanks for your good remembrance of me, in 
sending the article on Lady Palmerston. It has, I 
think, been delayed in delivery, as I only received it 
yesterday, and lucky to get it then, for I am just 
leaving this sweet place and expect, after one day's 
rest in Paris, to get home the middle of this week. 

" You must not think 1 have not already guessed 
you as the author of the article in question, which I 
had read with eager interest. 

" I think it much the best that has appeared ; much 
the best thing of the kind that even you ever wrote — 
perfect in taste, feeling, and style. It is the most 
difficult of all tasks, that sort of posthumous notice ; 



288 LAST YEARS [chap, xxii 

and the steering between a real profound regret and 
admiration, and the consciousness that you are to 
explain grounds of regret and admiration, and call on 
strangers to share both feelings, requires rare tact of 
measurement, what to say and what to leave unsaid. 
That tact you certainly have shown, nor is there any 
over-praise in anything you have written. 

"The trembling antennae with which those who are 
near and dear must always approach and examine the 
lives of their dead, cannot be hurt by your lines ; nor 
can strangers, in their carelessness, think them too 

Personal in any comment on her own many merits, 
have never heard particulars, wandering about as we 
have been ; but you will tell me, if I miss seeing Lady 
H. Cowper in Paris, which of her children were with 
her, etc. 

"This place is delicious, and Lady Emily charming, 
reminding me much, in a certain earnestness and sim- 
plicity, of Gifford, her brother, and full of information 
and ability of various kinds. Very musical also, which 
is a joy to me at all times : one of the few pleasures 
neither age nor sadness can make one indifferent to. 

" Baroness Adolf de Rothschild has a much finer 
house, but, in my opinion, not nearly so pretty a place, 
close by. She is an old Naples friend of mine, and I 
always thought her charming. 

*' I make my farewell by dining with her to-morrow, 
when I shall look my last on the blue lake, and turn 
into the dreadful railway tunnels. 

" If you write, write to Chesterfield Street, ' not to 
be forwarded.' I think Wednesday will see me there. 

" 1 heard of you from Stirling-Maxwell. 

" Yours ever truly, 

"C. Client." 

She went back, as usual, to a winter of hard work, 
the most dreary kind of literary hard work — hack 
work for the magazines. One of her friends speaking 
of her after her death says : 

" In her later days she had survived her zest for 
popularity, and sometimes seemed almost as if she 
had learned to enjoy, or at all events to provoke, its 
opposite, preferring to write anonymously, and taking 



1871] "JUANITA" 289 

as much pains with a criticism of a picture or a review 
of a new book as if her name had been prefixed at 
the beginning, or her well-known initials had been 
appended at the close." 

But such a statement about her could never have 
been more than partly true. Her desire for popular 
applause, indeed, she may have outgrown somewhat 
before she died, but she never outgrew her sensitive- 
ness to adverse criticism ; indeed, in her old age, all 
fault-finding became well-nigh intolerable to her, and 
too often in her later years she let herself go in im- 
patient self-justification, not only in private, but in 
public replies to the reviews of her last novels ; to 
defend her " Lost and Saved " from the imputation of 
immorality; and again when she was rather sharply 
used about " Old Sir Douglas." 

Another thing that always exasperated her was the 
appropriation of earlier writings of her own, especially 
her songs and melodies, without proper acknowledg- 
ment of the source from which they were derived ; 
and she was at last betrayed into a long, acrimonious 
discussion on this subject in The Times — interesting 
chiefly when she tells how she came to write " Juanita," 
the most?, popular of her songs ; familiar still to every 
College Glee Club throughout the United States, in 
places and among people to whom its history and 
author will always be utterly unknown. 

" Twenty years ago," she says in October 1871, "I 
composed a song, 'Juanita,' for one of my sons to sing 
to the guitar. It had a great vogue. It was not only 
extremely popular as a vocal piece, but was set by 
several instrumental composers as taken from the 
song published by me." 

She goes on with some warmth to explain how the 
musician, Charles d'Albret, had lately included this 
same song in one of his own compositions without 
one word to tell to whom it really belonged. 

37 



290 LAST YEARS [chap, xxii 

The whole letter shows a great deal of unnecessary 
irritation over this very widespread grievance of 
both writers and composers, besides containing some 
unlucky statements which she afterwards found 
herself in some straits to support. Indeed, we must 
reluctantly confess that in the end Mrs. Norton came 
off rather badly, Mrs. Henry Wood, whom she had 
rashly accused of taking the idea of " East Lynne " 
from a sketch she herself had long before contri- 
buted to the English Annual^ remaining undisputably 
mistress of the field. 

Her arrangements with her publishers were often 
unsatisfactory, full of misunderstandings and confusion 
for all concerned in them ; for she was not a person 
to whom such business matters came easily. She was 
always being cheated and overreached, and often 
thought herself cheated when it was she herself who 
was mistaken. 

Her first unfriendly encounter with one of this 
much-abused class of persons is worth preserving 
because of its quaint conclusion. It happened as long 
ago as the spring of her brother's elopement, when 
her troubles with the proprietor of her Court magazine, 
Bull, of Holies Street, reached such a point that she 
was called before the Vice-Chancellor to testify against 
him. 

The Vice-Chancellor, however, received her with 
scant courtesy, announcing that no one who made a 
business of writing fiction was competent to tell the 
truth about any question of mere fact. 

The Vice-Chancellor's opinion excited at the time 
a good deal of amusement among her acquaintances, 
and was no doubt sufficiently exasperating to her ; 
for in this matter, at least, she seems to have had the 
right on her side. But there was, perhaps, a residuum 
of truth in his conclusion. She must always have 
been too eager, too interested, of too constructive as 
well as retentive a memory either to receive or to 
retain impressions untinctured by her own strong 



1872] CHARACTERISTICS 291 

individuality. Indeed, she never outgrew a certain 
heedlessness and picturesqueness of statement w^hich 
made her always a very easy person to put in the 
wrong, as well as a very difficult one to deal with in 
matters of business. 

To the end of her life she was subject to bursts of 
stormy temper, on what seemed to the onlooker some- 
times very inadequate cause. But there was nothing 
mean or unworthy about these sudden outbursts. It 
was as if she was made on a somewhat larger plan 
from the rest of the world, as if unconsciously she 
moved with a somewhat wider step than her com- 
panions, till at last the growing difference between 
them had to be readjusted violently, often painfully, 
before they could walk together in peace again. And 
sometimes they never walked again together. But 
she never lost her facility for making new friends, 
and most of her old ones she kept on and on, through 
all the calms and storms of their relations, to the 
extreme end of her life. 

I quote now from a notice which appeared in the 
Athenceum after her death, written probably by one 
of the oldest of these old friends, Hayward : 

" One fine quality she evinced in all her ways of 
thinking and acting and writing, an unaffected disdain 
of affectation. Nothing could be simpler or more 
direct, nothing more tender and noble than her 
ordinary conversation ; but the iron had entered her 
soul, and every now and then there was a spice of 
mockery or scorn bitter as wormwood." 

Her last published letter to Hayward belongs to the 
end of 1872 : 

"Frampton Court, Dorchester, 
'"'' December 2Z, 1872. 

" Illustrious Avocat, 

" I will not delay answering about the quotation, 
though this is Saturday, and you will not have letters 
on Sunday ! 



292 LAST YEARS [chap, xxii 

" There is no copy of Walter Scott's poetry in this 
well-furnished house ! But the passage you quote is 
in * The Bridal of Triermain/ in the description of the 
Joust or Tournament, where — 

" ' Lanval, with the fairy lance 
And Dinadam with lively glance, 
And Launcelot, who looked askance 
Evermore on the Queen ' — 

distinguished themselves. I think the lines you want 
run thus : 

" ' And still these lovers' fame survives 
For truth so constant shown ; 
There were two who loved their neighbours' wives, 
And one who loved his own,' — 

the one being Lord Caradoc, or Craddock. You will 
easily find the passage, in that brief, lovely, and under- 
valued poem, which describes how — 

" ' All too well sad Guendolen 
Hath taught the faithlessness of men 
That child of hers should pity, when 
Their meed they undergo.' 

Not that I have found men inconstant — but very much 
the reverse — perhaps kings and princes are an ex- 
ception. While you are looking out the quotation, 
observe the lovely description of the girls who disarm 
Arthur and play with his armour. How pretty is the 
trying-on by one girl on her glossy little head of the 
helmet of that large warrior ! 

" ' Then screamed 'twixt laughter and surprise 
To feel its depth o'erwhelm her eyes.' 

" It was read to me, first, in the unforgotten days 
which idiots and sensualists think could only be filled 
with commonplace flatteries and fooleries — but which 
held, for me, the best intellectual tutorship any young 
eager mind ever received. 

** Like the old Brighton landlady who said, ' You live 
in the house, you know ; but everything else is an 
extra ; ' I have always set the other sort of love down 
as ' an extra.' An extra, too, which may be bought 
too dear, as all extras are. 

" Thanks for the little brochure of Lord Lansdowne. 
I read it over again the other day at Keir. It is far 



1872-3] LETTER TO HAYWARD 293 

the best notice that appeared, and page 7 the truest 
estimate of him and his value — so also at page 21. ' He 
listened as well as he talked ' is perfect. 

" I remember when first reading the notice, thinking 
the quotation at page 28 (from me) might mislead 
people ; for, after all, my ' wild appeals ' were not for 
help in any way, but justice about my children and 
reputation. 

" He once asked me to let him buy the manuscript of a 
novel, and I refused, saying it was meant for assistance. 

** Not that I should have been ashamed of his help ; 
I would have been very glad if he had remembered 
me as he did Blank. 

" I wonder it is not more done in this world of 
struggles. 

" How curious was that incident the other day, of the 
fortune of Mrs. Brown going to the Queen for lack of 
heirs ! And the poor old lady lived — I hear— in con- 
stant dread of being robbed, and of being known to be 
rich ! My grandson, Richard, is getting on well in 
languages. He is hard at work on German, and I will 
give him your translation of ' Faust ' to help him. 

" We all stay in the country till his holidays are 
ended, and then I shall be in Chesterfield Street for a 
little while. I have been poorly almost the whole year 
past ! 

" Motley broke a blood-vessel some weeks since, 
but recovered ; and is gone to Poltimore to welcome 
in the new year, 1873. Wishing you health and 
prosperity for that unseen interval of time, whose 
advent is ushered in for me by the Keir boys anxiously 
working me a kettle-holder, 

" Believe me, 

" Yours ever truly, 

" C. Client. 

" Excuse scrawliness, I am so hurried. I feared to 
miss the post to-morrow, so wrote at once about the 

verses." 

Lord Lansdowne had died in 1863. Lady Stirling- 
Maxwell died in 1874, just as Mrs. Norton and her 
grandchildren were going to make their usual autumn 
visit at Keir. 



294 LAST YEARS [chap, xxii 

But George Norton lived on, though after that 
forced companionship at the time of Fletcher's death 
his wife never saw him, and seldom spoke of him 
without the utmost bitterness and contempt. But 
nothing she felt towards him ever influenced her to 
an unkind action, even when she had it in her power 
to make him feel some small measure of the tyranny 
he had once inflicted on her. Whenever he was in 
town and wished to see his grandchildren while they 
were still under her direction, she was always ready 
to give him opportunity, sending them to him at his 
house in Wilton Place on Sunday mornings, when he 
would take them with him to church, or sometimes 
to walk. 

He grew very bent and infirm in these later years, 
older-looking than his elder brother, though he kept 
his clear, ruddy colouring to the end. Some years 
before his death he gave up his police magistracy and 
retired on a pension, spending much of his time here- 
after in the country, either on his estate in Yorkshire 
or with the Grantleys at Wonersh Park, 

One finds so little good of him that it is pleasant to 
insert here the opinion of one of his fellow-magistrates, 
Mr. Ellison, who had been long associated with him 
on the Bench. This gentleman is quoted as warmly 
praising Mr. Norton's care and patience in the dis- 
charge of his duty, and the ability he had displayed 
as magistrate in meeting the difficulties of each case 
referred to him for decision with good temper and a 
desire to do justice in every sense, especially mention- 
ing his anxiety for and sympathy with the poor. 

It would be pleasant to believe that this interest 
and sympathy for the poor, mentioned more than 
once as characteristic of Mr. Norton, was the one 
little silver thread caught in the web of this un- 
lovely character during those years of closest com- 
panionship with the generous, warm-hearted woman 
who had once, to use his own words, had all power 
over him. 



1875] ILLNESS 295 

He died at last at his brother's house, Wonersh 
Park, on March 20, 1875. 

His body was taken to Yorkshire to be buried, 
beside his two sons. Lord Grantley himself followed 
his brother a little later in the same year, and was 
buried in the family vault at Wonersh. Not so his 
wife. Lady Grantley survived her husband long 
enough to announce her intention of resting anywhere 
after death except by his side. She had lived with 
the Nortons all her life, she is reported as saying, and 
that was enough. Nothing on earth could persuade 
her to be buried with them. 

Mrs. Norton was in Italy with her son and grand- 
daughter when she heard of her husband's death. 
She was human enough to express a very natural 
irritation that, having lived so long, he had not lived 
a little longer and made her Lady Grantley before 
he died. 

His death was, none the less, a great shock to her. 
She came back instantly to England, and soon after- 
wards fell very ill, and for more than a year and a 
half was almost invalided in her room in Chesterfield 
Street. 

But she kept her looks to the end, though people 
only meeting her at this later time were less im- 
pressed with her eyes than with her lovely mouth 
and the beauty of her teeth and voice. 

"Yes, I shall be handsome, even when I am in my 
coffin," she said to some one who was admiring her 
in these later days. Yet she laughed at an artist 
whose sketch made her unduly youthful-looking, and 
called his pictures " Roses of Jericho." A rose of 
Jericho is a small shrub, the stiff branches of which, 
when withered, curl into an irregular circle, resembling 
a rose clumsily carved in wood ; but which, when put 
in water, expands and softens into life again. The 
poem "The Rose of Jericho," which is sometimes 
included among Mrs. Norton's own writings, is really 
not by her at all, but is a translation of a German fable 



296 SECOND MARRIAGE [chap, xxii 

made long before by her mother, Mrs. Sheridan, and 
published at last by the daughter in 1872. 

Perhaps the most satisfactory of her many like- 
nesses is the marble bust now at Frampton Court, 
done by her brother-in-law, Lord Gifford, while she 
was still at the height of her beauty. The terra-cotta 
bust by Williamson, now in the possession of the 
National Portrait Gallery, is interesting because it was 
completed after very few sittings — the last summer of 
her life — during the short period of her marriage with 
her old friend, Sir William Stirling-Maxwell, whose 
companion bust, made at the same time by the same 
sculptor, is also the property of the National Portrait 
Gallery. 

She was married in her own little drawing-room in 
Chesterfield Street, in the spring of 1877. Her grand- 
daughter speaks of the brief period that followed as 
a time of great peace and happiness for them all. 
The long struggle of her life was at last ended. The 
devoted friend of so many years was her husband, 
with the right, as well as the power and will, to pro- 
tect her against all further buffets of fortune. Her 
health, too, was better than it had been for years. 
Three months after her marriage, however, on the 
eve of her departure, with her husband and grand- 
daughter, to Keir, where they were all going to spend 
the rest of the summer, she was taken suddenly ill, 
and died, after a few days of acute suffering, on 
June 15, 1877. Her body was removed to Scotland, 
and buried in the family vault at Keir, her husband 
and her two grandchildren being the chief mourners — 
for Brinsley, Lord Grantley, was too ill to leave Italy 
even to attend his mother's funeral. His death, in 
fact, followed hers within a very few days. Nor did 
her husband. Sir William Stirling-Maxwell, survive 
her many months. 

He died of fever at Venice, on his way home from 
Capri, where he had gone to conduct his step-daughter 
to her widowed mother. If he had lived, perhaps 




MRS. NORTON. 



p. 296] 



1877] HER CLAIM TO BE REMEMBERED 297 

some effort would have been made to give Mrs. 
Norton's literary remains at least the permanence of 
a uniform edition. As it is, as I have already said, 
most of her writings, both prose and poetry, are 
nearly out of print. And for more than a genera- 
tion the history of her life has been left in the hands 
of persons who only cared to use its events so far as 
these supply material for that quasi-historical, wholly 
gossiping kind of reading-matter which is always 
fairly popular with a large class of readers. 

The best proof I can bring that all these earlier 
biographies are either misleading or inadequate, or 
both, lies in the foregoing pages, in which I have 
made no attempt to disguise Mrs. Norton's faults or 
magnify her virtues, or to defend her beyond the point 
when defence becomes special pleading. 

Nevertheless, I believe that no one can read these 
pages about her without being convinced that she has 
a defence which ought to protect her henceforth from 
the assaults of literary scandal-mongers, and that she 
has a claim for more serious consideration, both as 
a woman and as a writer, than has ever yet been 
accorded her. 

My excuse for taking up this defence and trying to 
advance this claim is the peculiar interest which I 
have always felt for everything even remotely con- 
nected with her history, an interest which must in 
the course of time have resulted in a somewhat fuller 
knowledge than is general even among her closest 
admirers, whose number indeed, even now, I believe 
to be not inconsiderable, and sure to increase as the 
real woman, the true measure of her nobly gifted 
though imperfect character, becomes more widely and 
more fairly known. 



38 



LIST OF MRS. NORTON'S WRITINGS 

The Sorrows of Rosalie and Other Poems (John Ebers & Co. 1829), 
The Undying One and Other Poems (H. Colburn & R. Bentley. 1830). 
Poems and Sketches in The Court Magazine and The Belle AssembUe 

for 1832-34 (J. Bull, of Holies Street). 
Poems in the English Annual for 1834-35. 
The Wife, and Woman's Reward. Two prose tales (Saunders & 

Otley. 1835). 
Poems appearing in The Keepsake for 1836. 
A Voice from the Factories. A poem (John Murray. 1836). 
Separation of Mother and Child by the Law of Custody of Infants 
considered, A prose pamphlet printed for private circulation by 
Ridgway. 1837. 
A Plain Letter to the Lord Chancellor, by Pearse Stevenson (a 
nom-de -plume). Printed for distribution among members of 
Parliament by J. Ridgway. Not published. 1839. 
"The Dream and Other Poems (Henry Colburn. 1840). 
The Child of the Islands. A Poem (Chapman & Hall. 1845). 
Fisher's Drawing-Room Scrap-Book. Poems (1846-48). 
Aunt Carry's Ballads for Children (1847). 
Letters to the Mob. Published first in The Morning Chronicle : 

collected 1848. 
Stuart of Dunleath. A Novel (1851). 
English Laws for Women in the Nineteenth Century. Printed for 

private circulation (1854). 
A Letter to the Queen on Lord Cranworth's Marriage and Divorce 

Bill (Longman, Brown, Green & Longmans. 1855). 
Verses on Burns. Centenary Festival, 1859. 
The Lady of La Garaye. A Poem (Macmillan & Co. 1862). 
Lost and Saved. A Novel (Hurst & Blackett. 1863. Rights 

purchased by Macmillan). 
Poems and Sketches in Macmillan^s Magazine (1861-75). 
Old Sir Douglas. A Serial. 



299 



LIST OF MRS. NORTON'S SONGS 

The Land I Love : " Fair though the land may be. ' 

The Lonely Harp : " Hush, I am listening." 

The Love of Helen Douglas. 

The Madman's Lament. 

Marquita. 

Let Lovers Talk. 

The Midshipman : " Peace be around thy distant grave. 

The Missionary's Grave : "Oh, far in the east." 

The Morning Star : " Our ship held her course." 

The Mother's Lament : " Oh, where shall I wander ? 

"Thy Name was once the Magic Spell." 

No More Sea : " Like the wild, ceaseless motion of the deep 

" None remember thee." 

Not Lost but Gone before. 

The Officer's Funeral. 

" Oh Distant Stars whose Tranquil Light.'' 

" Oh, Happy the Life we Gipsies lead." 

" Oh, take me back to Switzerland." 

The Path across the Seas : " In life's delightful morn.' 

Patrick, macushla : " Come, Patrick, cheer up." 

Pray for those at Sea. 

" Since Precious Things are Purchased Dear." 

The Soldier's Life : " Dauntless and glad." 

" Take thy Lute, oh Gentle Friend." 

Smiles of the Past : " In life's early dawning." 

The Song of the Fairies : " Sleep, mortal, sleep." 

Song of the New Year : " Hark ! the old year is flown." 

•' Sorrowful Trees, Cypress and Yew." 

The Talisman : " Oh beloved, now we are parted." 

To-morrow : " Bright smiling eyes." 

The Indian Exile : " An exile in the Indian land 

Upon his pillow dreaming lay." 
" Love not, love not— the thing you love may die." 

300 



LIST OF MRS. NORTON'S SONGS 301 

" We are the wandering breezes." 

" We have been friends together, shall a harsh word part us now ? " 

Woman's Truth : " Doubt me not, soldier." 

"Forget me not, though others fairer." 

The Birdie's Song : "As I came o'er the distant hills I heard a wee 
birdie sing." 

Come what may : " Since thy dear smile was lost." 

" By Mossy Bank in Forest Wild wood." 

King Frederick's Camp. 

The Cossack's War Song. 

The Faithful Lover: composed for and sung by Miss Christine 

Nilsson. 
Bingen on the Rhine : "A soldier of the legion." 
But Thou : " Delia, some few short years ago." 
The Fairy Bells : I dreamt, 'Twas but a dream." 
" I have left my quiet home." 
Absalom. 

A Health to the Outward Bound. 

The Blind Man's Bride : " Oh, blind I am and helpless." 
" Oh, slumber now, my darling." 
" Fade, watch-lights, fade." 
" Hopeless I've watched thee." 
My Arab steed : " My beautiful, my beautiful." 
The King of Denmark's Ride. 
Juanita : " Soft o'er the fountain." 



INDEX 



Aberdeen, Lord, 198 

Abinger, Lord, case tried before, 
125, 148 

Adelaide, Queen, 37 

Age, The, publishes slanders 
against Mrs. Norton, 82 

Airlie, Lady, 258 

Aix la Chapelle, 62 

Albion, the transport, 3 

Albret, Charles d', 289 

Almack's, dance of the months at, 
12 

Alvanley, Lord, 285 

" Amou'ivada and Sebastian," 8 

Antrim, Earl of, i 

Antwerp, 59, 60 

Ardkinglass, i, 3 

Ashley, Lady, 112 

Ashley, Lord, 112. See Shaftes- 
bury 

Astor Library, 141 

Auckland, Lord, 56 

Austin, Lucie, 195 

Babbage, Mr., letter from Mrs. 
Norton, 44 

Barlow, Rev. Mr., letter from 
Mrs. Norton, 87 

Barnes, Thomas, editor of The 
Times, 198 

Barrington, Lady, 56 

Bates, William, " Maclise Gallery 
of Portraits " edited by, 39 

Bayley, Sir John, legal adviser to 
G. Norton, 119 ; his prejudice 
against Mrs. Norton, 119; un- 
dertakes the task of arbitrator 
between Mr. and Mrs. Norton, 
120 ; on the result of his in- 
vestigation into their case, 121- 
123 ; gives evidence in the trial 



before Lord Abinger, 125 ; de- 
nies Mr. Norton's assertions 
against his wife, 234 

Beauvale, Lord, 213 

Beechey, Sir William, 9 

Belgians, Leopold, King of the, 
20 ; his criticism on Mrs. Nor- 
ton, 178 

Belgioso, Princess, 65 

Belle A ssemblde. La, editorship of, 
46 

Blackwood, Mrs., birth of a son, 
13 ; at Hampton Court, 59. 
See Dufferin 

Blackwood, Price, 33 ; his mar- 
riage, II. See Dufferin 

Blessington, Countess of, 49 

Brandon, Lady, her relations with 
Lord Melbourne, 33 ; legacy 
from him, 213 

Brighton, 31 

British and Foreign Review, The, 
insulting article on Mrs. Norton, 
148 

Brookfield, Rev. Mr., his impres- 
sions of Mrs. Norton, 195 

Brougham, Lord, 32 ; in Paris, 
64 ; his devotion to Mrs. Norton, 
64 ; opposition to the Infant 
Custody Bill, 146 ; speech 
against the Bill, 147 ; on amend- 
ing the Law of Divorce, 248 

Browning, Mrs., " Cry of the 
Children," 112 

Brussels, 59 

Bull, proprietor of The Court 
Magazine, 55 

Bulwer, Sir Lytton, 142 

Buren, John Van, his impressions 
of Mrs. Norton, 156 

Burn, Mr., 57 



303 



304 



INDEX 



Bums, Robert, centenary of his 

birth, 264 
Bush, Mr., 41 
Butler, Mr., 181 

Cairo, 286 

Calais, 59 

Callander, Fanny, 3. See Graham 

Callander, Georgiana, 3 

Callander, Henrietta, i. See 
Sheridan, Mrs. 

Callander, James, i 

Campbell, Lady Dorothy, 90 

Campbell, Miss Colin, 109 note 

Campbell, Sir John, Attorney- 
General, 93, 94 ; " Lives of the 
Lord Chancellors," 93 note ; on 
Lord Melbourne's loss of of&ce, 
179 

Canning, George, 33 

Cape of Good Hope, 2 

Capri, 275, 296 

Carlisle, Lady, 64 

" Case of the Hon. Mrs. Norton," 
141 

Castellamare, 182 

Catholic Emancipation, 18, 197 

Chartist disturbances, 189 

Chatsworth, 19 

Chepnell, Dr., 266 

" Child of the Islands, The," 184- 
188 

Chorley, Mr., publishes a Memoir 
of Mrs. Hemans, 134 

Clanricarde, Lady, 65 

Clarence, Duchess of, poem dedi- 
cated to, 25 

Clarence, Duke of, 25 

Clements, Lord, 27 

Cliveden, 262 

Clumber, 239 

Colburn, H., publisher, 174 ; ex- 
tracts from his New Monthly 
Magazine, 3 note, 4 note, 38 

Colburn & Bentley, Messrs., 24 

Coleridge, Hartley, his review on 
Mrs. Norton's poems, 175 

Cologne, 59 

Comins, Victor, 257 

" Comparison, A, between the 
English and Scotch Law of 
Divorce," 133 

Conyngham, Lady, 181 

Corn Laws, repeal of the, 197, 198 

Court, Elizabeth a, her marriage, 

274 
Court, General Charles Ashe a, 
274 



Court Magazine, editorship of the, 
46 

Covent Garden Theatre, per- 
formance of The Gypsy Father 
at the, 37 

Cowes, 162 

Cowper, Lady, 18 

Cowper, Lady Emily, 112 

Cowper, Lady Fanny, 112 

Cowper, Lady H., 288 

Craig, Miss Isabel, 264 

Craigforth, i 

Cranworth, Lord, his Bill to re- 
form the English Marriage and 
Divorce Laws, 243 

Creevy, extract from his diary, 92 

Crimean War, outbreak of, 239 

Cunard, Sir Samuel, 181 

" Dandies' Rout, The," 5 

Delane, John Thaddeus, editor of 
The Times, 198 ; article on the 
repeal of the Corn Laws, 198 

Denman, Lord, his support of the 
Infant Custody Bill, 146 

" Destiny, A," 175 

Devonshire, Duke of, his atten- 
tions to Mrs. Norton, 19 

Dinan, 270 

Disraeli, Benjamin, his friendship 
with the Sheridans, 48 ; votes 
in favour of the Infant Custody 
Bill, 145 

Divorce, Law of. Bill to amend, 

243-250 

Dramatic Representation Bill, 
failure, 51 

" Dream, The," extract from, 6 ; 
publication, 174 ; second edi- 
tion, 176 ; pecuniary results, 
177 

Drury Lane Theatre, destroyed 
by fire, 2 

Dufferin, Lady, at the Cape of 
Good Hope, 2 ; story of her 
brother-in-law, 48 ; her visit to 
Italy, 156 ; death of her hus- 
band, 182 ; in Paris. 192 ; 
settles in London, 201 ; at 
Lansdowne House, 260 ; her 
appearance, 260 ; son, 260 ; 
second marriage, 261 note ; 
death, 284 

Dufferin, Lord, his death, 182 

Dufferin, Lord, his " Life of Helen 
Sheridan," 2 ; on the charac- 
teristics of Fletcher Norton, 
207 ; novel dedicated to, 284 



INDEX 



305 



Duncombe, Thomas, 285 
Dundee steamship, 100 



Eastlake, Lady, her impressions 

of Mrs. Norton, 222, 254 
Eden, Emily, 57 
Edinburgh, i, 264 
Edinburgh Review, review of 

" The Child of the Islands," 186 
Ehrenbreitstein, poem on, 60-62 
Ell ice, Edward, 154 
Ellice, Robert, yy 
Ellis, Lady, 255 
Ellis, Sir Henry, 255 
Ellison, Mr., on G. Norton's mode 

of discharging his duties, 294 
English Annual, editorship of, 49 
" English Laws for Women in the 

Nineteenth Century," 10, 239- 

243 

Essex, Earl of. 276 ; novel dedi- 
cated to, 276 

Examiner, The, letter in, 149 

Factories, investigation into the 
condition of child-labour in, 112 

Falkland, Lord, his marriage, 32 

Federigo, Maria Chiara Elisa, her 
marriage, 253 

" Fever Dream, The," 115, 175 

Feversham, Lord, his marriage, 
224 note 

Fisher's Drawing-room Scrap-book, 
poems in, 158, 172 ; editorship 
of the, 189 ; frontispiece, 206 

Fitzclarence, Lady Amelia, her 
marriage, 32 

Fitzgerald, his " Lives of the 
Sheridans," extracts from, 12, 
87. 91, 132 

Florence, 257 

Follett, Sir William, Solicitor- 
General, 93, 234 

Fonblanque, Mr., his paper. The 
Examiner, 149 

Fox, Lady Mary, 81, 141 

Frampton Court, 262 

Eraser's Magazine, review of 
" The Undying One," 25 ; pub- 
lishes likenesses of Mrs. Nor- 
ton, 38 

Geneva, 287 

George IV., King, his death, 29 
Ghent, 59 
Gibson, Eliza, 95 
Gifford, Lord, 261 ; his marriage, 
261 note ; appearance, 261 



note ; marble bust of Mrs. Nor- 
ton, 296 

Gladstone, W. E., his opposition 
to the reform of the Divorce 
Law, 250 

Glenrossie, 3 

Godwin, Mrs., annuity for, 89, 
141-143 

Godwin, William, his death, 89 

Gordon, Sir Alexander Duff, 195 ; 
birth of a son, 210; letters 
from Mrs. Norton, 210-212, 276 

Gordon, Lady Duff, 195 ; letter 
from Mrs. Norton, 223 ; article 
on, 286 ; her death, 286 

Gordon, Lucy, 257 

Gower, Lord Ronald, letter from 
Mrs. Norton, 286 

Graham, Sir James, 3 ; First Lord 
of the Admiralty, 33 ; resigns 
office, 145 ; secession from the 
Whigs, 145 

Graham, Lady, 156 ; her appear- 
ance, 58 

Graham, Mabel, her marriage, 224 

Grant, Sir Colquhoun, 67 ; elope- 
ment of his daughter, 67, 68 ; 
fights a duel, 68 

Grant, Miss Marcia, her runaway 
marriage, 67 

Grantley, Brinsley, Lord, his 
illness and death, 296. See 
Norton 

Grantley, Fletcher, Lord, 8 ; 
relations with his wife, 9 ; 
influence against Mrs. Norton, 
82, 84 ; dislike of his nephews, 
83 ; death, 295 

Grantley, Lady, relations with 
her husband, 9 

Granville, Lady, 64 ; extract 
from her diary, 19 

" Great Ladies," 46 

Greville, Charles, on the friendship 
between Queen Victoria and 
Lord Melbourne, 127 ; on Lord 
Melbourne's loss of office, 180 

Greville, Henry, 64 

Grey, Lord, Prime Minister, 32 ; 
resignation, 64 

Grote, his opposition to the 
Infant Custody Bill, 145 

Guildford, 8 

Gypsy Father, The, 37 

Hamilton, Mr. James, his im- 
pressions of Mrs. Norton, 164 
Hampton Court, life at, 4 

39 



3o6 



INDEX 



Harvey, Daniel, votes in favour 
of the Infant Custody Bill, 145 

Hayter, John, his portraits of 
Mrs. Norton, 45 

Hay ward, Abraham, no; on 
G. Norton's insult to his wife, 
124 ; editor of The Quarterly 
Review of Jurisprudence, 132 
note ; hatred of his Christian 
name, 159 ; collects the affi- 
davits for Mrs. Norton, 159; ex- 
perience with Lord Melbourne, 
160 ; letters from Mrs. Norton, 
162-164, 194, 209, 254, 256, 
264, 285, 287, 291 ; his review 
of " The Child of the Islands," 
186 ; on the impossibility of 
advising Mrs. Norton, 235 ; 
Secretary of the Poor Law 
Board, 255 ; " Biographical 
and Critical Essays," 256 ; 
at Lansdowne House, 260 ; 
notice of the life and character 
of Lady Palmerston, 287 

Heath, Mr., publisher of The 
Keepsake, 66 

Hemans, Mrs., Memoir of, 134 

Herbert, Sidney, 181, 189, 195, 
261 ; his parents, 197 ; char- 
acteristics, 197 ; marriage, 274 ; 
iUness and death, 274 ; verses 
on, 274 

Holland, Lady, 56 ; her death, 197 

Holland, Lord, poem dedicated 
to, 21 ; support of the Infant 
Custody Bill, 146 ; his letter to 
Mrs. Norton, 147 

Holland, Queen of, her friendship 
with Mrs. Norton, 214 ; ap- 
pearance, 214 ; loss of her 
second son, 214 

Hook, Theodore, his appearance, 
26 ; skill in extempore com- 
position, 26 ; treatment of 
Mrs. Norton, 27 

Houghton, Lord, 215 

Howard, Harry, 211 

" In the Storm," 268-270 
Infant Custody Bill, 130, 137, 
139 ; withdrawn, 140 ; passed 
in the House of Commons, 145 ; 
amendment on, 145 ; in the 
Lords, 146 ; rejected, 147 ; 
carried through, 156 
Influenza, epidemic of, 115 
" Invisibility of London Hus- 
bands, The," 46 



Ireland, 2 

Isle of Wight, 54 

Jameson, Mrs., letter from Fanny 

Kemble, 28 
Jersey, Countess of, 18 
Jocelyn, Lord, 112 
John Bull review, 25, 26 
Jonson, Ben, his play, Every Man 

in His Humour, 196 
Jordan, Mrs., 81 note 
" Juanita," 289 

Keepsake, editorship of the, 66 ; 
poems in the, 109 

Keir, 224, 284 

Kelly, Sir Fitzroy, 125 ; letter 
from Mrs. Norton, 252 

Kemble, Fanny, her first meeting 
with Mrs. Norton, 26 ; " Re- 
collections of a Girlhood," 
26 ; impressions of Mrs. Norton, 
28 ; introduction to Lord Mel- 
bourne, 36 ; description of a 
dinner at " Palazzo Boltoni," 
181 

Kemble, John, his attack on Mrs. 
Norton, 150 

Kettlethorpe, 166, 268 

Kinglake, 194 ; " Eothen," 195 

Kinnaird, Douglas, 114 

Kinnaird, Lord, 3 

Kisselieff, 144 ; in London, 145 

" Lady of La Garaye, The," 271 
Lamb, Lady Caroline, her death, 

33 
Lamb, William, 287 
Landseer, E., his portrait of 

Mrs. Norton, 174 
Lansdowne, Lord, 182, 260; Lord 

President, 33 ; poem dedicated 

to, 272-274 ; brochure on, 292 ; 

death, 293 
" Law of Libel, The," 46 
Leman, Mr., 208 ; contradicts 

George Norton's misstatements, 

234 
Lenox Library, 152, 165 
" Letter to the Queen on Lord 

Cranworth's Marriage and 

Divorce Bill," 246 
" Letters to the Mob," 189 
Leven, Earl of, 284 
Linley, Miss, i 
Lisbon, 210 ; British Legation at, 

207 
Littell's Living Age, 283 



INDEX 



307 



Lockhart, J. G., 113, 194 ; his 

death, 255 
Longleat, 41 
" Lord Chancellor, Letter to the," 

151 
" Lost and Saved," 276-282 
Louis Philippe, King, 64 
Lyell, Lady, her appearance, 222 
Lynd hurst, Lord, no ; Lord 
Chancellor, 65 ; his political 
views, 65 ; introduces the 
Infant Custody Bill into the 
House of Lords, 146 ; speech on 
amending the Law of Divorce, 
249 

Macaulay, Lord, 260 
Macdonnell, Lady Elizabeth, i 
MacFarlane, Sir Robert, 68 
" Maclise Gallery of Portraits," 

39 

Macmillan's Magazine, 283 

Macready, extract from his diary, 
181 

Madeira, 3 

Mahon, Lord, his amendment on 
the Infant Custody Bill, 145 

Maiden Bradley, 41, 132 

" Maiden's Dream, The," 59 

Malmesbury, Lord, 94, 116; ex- 
tract from his diary, 201 

Malta, 2 

Margate, 39 

Marriage and Divorce Laws, Bill 
to reform, 243-250 

McDonald, Sir John, 26 

Melbourne, Lord, 17 ; Home 
Secretary, 33 ; his career, 33 ; 
relations with Lady Brandon, 
33 ; friendship with Mrs. Nor- 
ton, 34, 88, 107 ; character- 
istics, 35 ; dismissal from office, 
64 ; criticism of " The Wife," 
71 ; at Panshanger, 83 ; his 
letters to Mrs. Norton on the 
treatment of her husband, 83, 
85, 86 ; assistance to Mrs. 
Godwin, 90 ; charges against, 

91 ; anxiety about the trial, 

92 ; illness, 92 ; the trial, 93 ; 
acquittal, 94 ; on the character 
of G. Norton, 105 ; restrains 
Mrs. Norton from publishing a 
statement of her case, 126, 
129 ; friendship with Queen 
Victoria, 127 ; affidavit, 160 ; 
his fall from office, 179 ; 
resumes his old habits, 180 ; 



stroke of paralysis, 180 ; ap- 
pearance, 181 ; new relations 
with Mrs. Norton, 181 ; letters 
from her, 192, 193, 200 ; his 
death, 210 ; legacies, 213 

Menzies, Lady, 16, 46, yy ; re- 
lations with her sister-in-law, 
16 ; treatment of Mrs. Norton's 
children, loi 

Menzies, Sir Neil, 16 ; his liking 
for his sister-in-law, 17 

Menzies, Sir Robert, his marriage, 
202 

Meredith, Owen, 262 

Milman, Dean, 260 

Milne, Monckton, 215. See 
Houghton 

Moira, Earl of, i 

Moore, Martha, 94 

Moore, Mrs., letter from Mrs. 
Norton, 39 

Moore, Tom, on the appearance of 
Caroline Sheridan, 12 ; " Lalla 
Rookh," 56 

Morley's " Life of Gladstone," 
248 

Morning Chronicle, 189 

Morris, Jack, his claims for help, 
192 

" Mother's Heart, The," 78 

Motley, J. L., 48 ; impressions of 
the Queen of Holland, 214 ; in 
London, 258 ; meeting with Mrs. 
Norton, 258 ; impressions of 
her, 258 ; at Lansdowne House, 
260 ; at Frampton Court, 262 ; 
breaks a blood-vessel, 293 

Motley, Mary, her marriage, 284 

Moxon, the publisher, 194 

Mulgrave, Lord, 65 

Murray, John, his refusal to 
publish Mrs. Norton's poem, 
59 ; publishes the " Voice 
from the Factories," 112 ; letters 
from her, 112, 113, 117, 150, 
175 ; on the publication of 
" 'The Natural Claim of a 
Mother," etc., 131 

Murray, Mr. tutor to the Norton 
boys, 193 

" My Arab Steed," 26 

Naples, British Embassy at, 226 

" Natural Claim of a Mother to 

the Custody of her Children as 

affected by the Common Law 

Right of the Father," 130, 140 

Netherby, 69 



3o8 



INDEX 



New Brunswick," i8i 

Newcastle, Duke of, 189, 239, 

255 

Nicholles, Mr., his tract on 
" Teeth," 51 

Normanby, Lord, 182 

Norton, Augusta, her relations 
with Mrs. Norton, 42-44 ; 
eccentricities, 42 ; influence 
against her, 102 

Norton, Brinsley, his birth, 42 ; 
affection for his mother, 171, 
172 ; character, 203 ; defence 
of his brother, 204 ; at Uni- 
versity College, 226 ; extra- 
vagance and debts, 226 ; his 
marriage, 253 ; at Florence, 
257 ; Dinan, 270 ; death of 
his mother, 296 ; illness and 
death, 296 

Norton, Mrs. Caroline, her 
parents, i ; date of her birth, 

2 ; appearance, 2, 11, 35, 58, 
no, 155, 164, 207, 222, 295 ; 
at Ardkinglass, 2 ; education, 

3 ; death of her father, 3 ; 
life at Hampton Court, 4 ; 
104 ; fondness for theatricals, 

4 ; first literary venture, 5 ; 
lines on her mother, 6 ; at 
school, 7, 8 ; her songs, 8 ; 
poem " Amouivada and Se- 
bastian," 8 ; first meetings 
with G. Norton, 9 ; her shyness, 
12, 135 ; death of her brother, 
13 ; marriage, 13 ; character- 
istics, 14, 28, 104, no, 186, 
190, 290 ; relations with her 
husband, 15, 41, 49, 62-64, 
80, 102, 187, 212, 217 ; visits 
to Scotland, 16, 46 ; her house 
at Storey's Gate, 17 ; 
differences of opinion with 
her husband, 18 ; admirers, 
19 ; " The Sorrows of Rosalie, 
a Tale, with other Poems," 
21-23 ; birth of a son, 23 ; 
her poem " The Undying One," 
23-26 ; first meeting with 
Fanny Kemble, 26 ; refuses 
to live in the country, 30 ; 
at Brighton, 31 ; friendship 
with Lord Melbourne, 34, 83 ; 
presented at Court, 37 ; per- 
formance of her play The 
Gypsy Father, 37 ; portraits, 
38, 45, 174, 206; on the altera- 
tions at Storey's Gate, 39 ; 



at Maiden Bradley, 41 ; birth 
of a second son, 42 ; relations 
with her sister-in-law Augusta, 
42-44 ; assumes the editorship 
of La Belle AssembUe and 
Court Magazine, 46 ; satirical 
papers, 46 ; editor of The 
English Annual, 49 ; contri- 
butions to it, 50 ; her sketch 
of Hermione, 50-52 ; cruel 
treatment by her husband, 52- 
54, 63, 76, 82, 245 ; birth of a 
third son, 54 ; at Worthing, 
55 ; affection for her relations, 

58 ; conclusion of her engage- 
ment with The Court Magazine, 

59 ; " The Maiden's Dream," 
59 ; tour abroad, 60 ; poem 
on Ehrenbreitstein, 60-62 ; at 
Paris, 63, 254, 257 ; editor of 
The Keepsake, 66 ; stories of 
her children, 66 ; visit to 
Richmond, 67 ; publication of 
her ijovel " The Wife and 
Woman's Reward," 70-75 ; 
" Erberfeldt " unfinished, 70 ; 
leaves her husband, 76 ; returns 
to him, 76 ; loss of a child, 
jy ; love for her children, 78 ; 
her poem " The Mother's 
Heart," 78 ; "To my Piano," 
79 ; her description of the 
quarrel about the children, 
80-82 ; charges against her, 
82, 84 ; parted from her 
children, 83, 103 ; attempts 
to compromise her, 85 ; pro- 
poses to return, 87 ; suit of 
divorce, 87 ; her relations with 
Lord Melbourne, 88, 229 ; helps 
in obtaining a pension for 
Mrs. Godwin, 90, 141-143 ; 
attempts to recover her chil- 
dren, 91, 104 ; result of the 
trial, 96 ; terms of the legal 
separation, 96, 208 ; efforts 
to see her children, 98-100 ; 
interview with her husband, 
10 1 ; relations with her mother, 
104 ; on her sufferings, 108 ; 
shares a house in Green Street 
with her uncle, in; her poem 
" Voice from the Factories," 
III ; delays in publishing, 
114 ; attack of influenza, 115 ; 
" Fever Dream," 115, 175 ; 
return into society, 116; on 
the loneliness of her position, 



INDEX 



309 



116, 191 ; interview with Sir 
John Bayley, 120 ; payment 
of her debts, 123, 245 ; result 
of the case tried before Lord 
Abinger, 125, 148 ; restrained 
by Lord Melbourne from pub- 
lishing a statement of her 
case, 126, 129 ; her prose 
pamphlet " The Natural Claim 
of a Mother," etc., 130-134, 
140 ; resolves to print it at 
her own expense, 131, 133 ; 
sees her children, 139, 164 ; 
personal influence on the Infant 
Custody Bill, 140 ; " The Case 
of the Hon. Mrs. Norton," 
141 ; removal to Bolton Street, 
144 ; defence in The Examiner, 
149, 151 ; her views on 
woman's rights, 149 ; " Letter 
to the Lord Chancellor," 151- 
154 ; visit to Italy, 157 ; 
lines on, 158 ; petition to the 
Lord Chancellor, 159 ; persecu- 
tions, 160-162 ; on the death 
of her son William, 166-170 ; 
allowed to have her children, 
170 ; on their characters, 171 ; 
poem " The Sons of the Duke 
of Buccleuch," 172 ; " The 
Dream and other Poems," 
174 ; her title of " The Byron 
of Modern Poetesses," 175; 
presented to Queen Victoria, 
178 ; entertainments at the 
" Palazzo Boltoni," 180, 181 ; 
new relations with Lord Mel- 
bourne, 181 ; death of her 
brother and uncle, 182 ; " The 
Child of the Islands," 184 ; 
illness, 185, 193, 295 ; editor of 
Fisher's Drawing-room Scrap- 
book, 189; "Letters to the Mob," 
189 ; new friends, 195 ; anxi- 
eties about her son Fletcher, 
202 ; on the character of 
Brinsley, 203 ; signs a deed 
of separation, 209 ; illness of 
her son Fletcher, 210 ; at 
Lisbon, 210 ; on Portuguese 
society, 211 ; legacy from 
Lord Melbourne, 213 ; travels 
abroad, 213 ; friendship with 
the Queen of Holland, 214 ; 
death of her mother, 214, 
225 ; friendship with Sir 
Wniiam Stirhng-Maxwell, 215 ; 
her novel " Stuart of Dun- 



leath," 218-222 ; at Keir, 224, 
284 ; joins her son Fletcher 
at Naples, 226 ; reduction of 
her allowance, 227, 252 ; bru- 
tality of her husband's last 
attack, 228-232 ; her letters 
to The Times, 233, 235 ; accu- 
sations of her husband, 233 ; 
reputation, 235-237 ; " English 
Laws for Women of the Nine- 
teenth Century," 239-243 ; her 
allowance withheld, 245 ; 
" Letter to the Queen on 
Lord Cranworth's Divorce Bill," 
246-248 ; marriage of her son 
Brinsley, 253 ; in Ireland, 
255 ; meeting with Motley, 
258 ; in Edinburgh, 264 ; death 
of her son Fletcher, 265-268 ; 
" In the Storm," 268-270 ; 
at Dinan, 270 ; her last long 
poem, " The Lady of La 
Garaye," 271 ; dedication to 
Lord Lansdowne, 272-274 ; 
verses on Sidney Herbert, 274 ; 
birth of her first grandchild, 
275 ; care of her grandchildren, 
275 ; her novel " Lost and 
Saved," 276-282 ; " Old Sir 
Douglas," 283 ; death of her 
sister Lady Dufferin, 284 ; 
serious falls, 286 ; article on 
Lady Duff Gordon, 286 ; grief 
at the death of the Duchess of 
Sutherland, 286 ; of Lady 
Palmerston, 287 ; in Switzer- 
land, 287 ; sensitiveness to 
adverse criticism, 289 ; her 
song " Juanita," 289 ; arrange- 
ments with her publishers, 
290 ; death of her husband, 

295 ; busts, 296 ; second mar- 
riage, 296 ; illness and death, 

296 ; list of her writings, 
299 ; list of her songs, 300 

Norton, Carlotta, her birth, 275 
Norton, Mrs. Charles, 109 note 
Norton, Fletcher Spencer, his 
birth, 23 ; attack of scarlatina, 
80 ; character, 171, 203, 207 ; 
influence over his father, 171 ; 
relations with his mother, 202 ; 
religious views, 207 ; appointed 
to the British Legation in 
Lisbon, 207 ; invalided home, 
208 ; illness, 210 ; recovery, 
210 ; Secretary of the British 
Embassy at Naples, 226 ; trans- 



3IO 



INDEX 



f erred to Paris, 257 ; illness 
and death, 265-268 ; funeral 
at Kettlethorpe, 268 
Norton, George, first meetings 
with Caroline Sheridan, 9 ; 
his appearance, 10 ; character- 
istics, 10, 14 ; elected member 
for Guildford, 13 ; marriage, 
13 ; poverty, 14 ; cruel treat- 
ment of his wife, 15, 52-54, 
63, 76, 82, 167, 245 ; difference 
of opinions with his wife, 18 ; 
political views, 18 ; loss of his 
seat, 29 ; appointed Judge in 
the Lambeth Police Court, 38 ; 
visit to Scotland, 46 ; Recorder 
for Guildford, 57 ; trip abroad, 
60 ; lameness, 62 ; his selfish 
tyranny, 62 ; relations with 
Miss Vaughan, 75, 'J^ ; appeals 
to his wife to return, 76 ; straits 
for money, 'j'j ; removes the 
children, 81, 83 ; charges 
against his wife, 82, 84 ; refuses 
to take her back, 87 ; suit 
for divorce, 87 ; relations with 
Lord Melbourne, 88 ; loss of 
his case, 94 ; his terms for 
a legal separation, 96-98, 208 ; 
interview with his wife, 10 1 ; 
his " Greenacre Letters," 102, 
117; liability for her debts, 
123 ; death of his son William, 
166 ; his affection for his 
sons, 171 ; relations with his 
wife, 187, 212, 217 ; kindness 
to the poor, 187, 294 ; signs a 
deed of separation, 209 ; on 
reducing his wife's allowance, 
225 ; dishonours her cheques, 
227 ; brutality of his last 
attack on her, 228-232 ; letter 
of accusation in The Times, 
223 ; assumes possession of 
her contracts, 238 ; withholds 
her allowance, 245 ; retires 
from his police magistracy, 294 ; 
discharge of his duty, 294 ; 
death, 295 

Norton, James, 203 

Norton, Richard, his birth, 275 ; 
his progress in languages, 293 

Norton, William, his birth, 54 ; 
his accident and death, 166 

Nugent, Lord, 256 

Ogle, Miss Esther, i 
' ' Old Sir Douglas," 283 



Orsay, Lady Harriet d', 182 
Oxford, Bishop of, his opposition 

to the reform of the Divorce 

Law, 250 

" Palazzo Boltoni," dinners at, 

181 
Palmerston, Lady, 18, 112; her 

death, 287 ; notice of her in 

The Times, 287 
Panizzi, Mr., letter from Mrs. 

Norton, 196 
Panshanger, 83 
Paris, 63 
Parliament, Houses of, burning of, 

64 
" Peculiar Customs of the County 

of Middlesex, The," 46 
Peel, Sir Robert, 32 ; assumes 

office, 179 ; change of his 

political views, 197 ; on the 

repeal of the Corn Laws, 198 
Pembroke, Earl of, 197 
Phipps, Hon. Edmund, 209 
Phipps, Hon. Mrs. Edmund, 109 

note 
Phipps, Mrs. 156 
Piers, Captain Edward, molests 

Mrs. Norton, 161 
Portugal, 210; society in, 211 
Potato crop, failure, 197 
Property, Rights of, 134 

Quarterly Review, review on Mrs. 

Norton's poems, 175 
Quinares, Countess, 212 

Rannoch, Loch, 17, 46, 100 

Reeve, Henry, 195 ; editor of 
the " Greville Memoirs," 198 ; 
on the announcement of the 
repeal of the Corn Laws, 
198 ; article in The Edinburgh 
Review on George Meredith's 
novels, 198 

Reform Bill of 1832, 43 

Rhine, the, 59 

Rice, Miss Spring, her marriage, 

157 

Richmond, 67 

Rio de Janeiro, 13 

Robinson, Crabb, 194 

Roe, Sir Frederick, chief magis- 
trate, 81 

Rogers, Samuel, story of, m ; 
letters from Mrs. Norton, 166- 
168, 171, 186 

" Rose of Jericho, The," 295 



INDEX 



311 



Rothschild, Baroness Adolf de, 

288 
Royal Bounty Fund, 90 
Royal William, steam, vessel, 100 
Russell, Lord John, 56, 260 

St. Leonards-on-Sea, 192 

St. Maur, Lord Edward, 259 

St. Maur, Lady Ulrica, her ap- 
pearance, 259 

Satirist, The, publishes slanders 
against Mrs. Norton, 82 

Saunders & Otley, Messrs., 60 

Schuyler, Major Philip, 165 

Sefton, Countess of, 18 

Seymour, Sir Hamilton, 207, 212 ; 
head of the British Legation at 
Lisbon, 261 ; character, 261 

Seymour, Hermione, her por- 
trait, 50-52 

Seymour, Lady, her marriage, 29 ; 
letters from her sister Caroline, 
50, 56, 168-170, 257, 270 ; 
affection for her relations, 58 ; 
appearance, 58, 155 ; in Paris, 
185, 192. See Somerset 

Seymour, Lord, his marriage, 29 ; 
on the trip abroad, 59 ; fights 
a duel, 68 

Seymour, Ulrica, 57 

Shaftesbury, Earl of, his life-work 
of philanthropy, 112 

Shalford, 7, 8 

Shelburne, Lady, 260 

Shelley, Mrs., letters from Mrs. 
Norton, 90, 95, 133, 137, 141, 
142, 143, 177, 184; tries to 
obtain an annuity for Mrs. 
Godwin, 89, 141 ; her poetic 
liberalism, 136 ; fascination for 
Mrs. Norton, 136 

Sheridan, Brinsley, 2 ; his appear- 
ance, 4, 58, 262 ; his return 
from India, 48 ; runaway mar- 
riage, 67 ; charged with ab- 
duction, 69 ; character, 69 

Sheridan, Mrs. Brinsley, her ap- 
pearance, 202 

Sheridan, Caroline, 2. See Norton 

Sheridan, Charles, i, 3, iii, 154; 
his translation of Romaic songs, 
8 ; his death, 182 

Sheridan, Charles, 17, 58 ; his 
birth, 3 ; secretary at the 
British Embassy, Paris, 183 ; 
his death, 206 

Sheridan, Frank, 3, 17, 58 ; ap- 
pointed Clerk of the Admiralty, 



33 ; his return from Ireland, 
65 ; treasurer of the British 
colony at Mauritius, 182 ; death, 
182 

Sheridan, Georgiana, 4, 17 ; on 
the separation of a large family, 
7 ; letter from, 24 ; her mar- 
riage, 29. See Seymour 

Sheridan, Helen, 2 ; her mar- 
riage, II. See Blackwood 

Sheridan, Mrs., death of her hus- 
band, 3 ; return from the Cape, 

3 ; home at Hampton Court, 

4 ; appearance and character- 
istics of her children, 4 ; her 
characteristics, 5, 104 ; literary 
works, 5 ; " Carwell," 6 ; lines 
on, 6 ; appearance, 6, 58 ; 
bringing up of her childreii, 7 ; 
at the Isle of Wight, 54 ; re- 
lations with her daughter Caro- 
line, 104 ; in Paris, 192 ; letter 
from her, 202-205 ; illness and 
death, 214, 225 ; her transla- 
tion of the poem " The Rose of 
Jericho," 296 

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, i 

Sheridan, Tom, i ; his children, 
2, 3 ; fatal disease, 2 ; at the 
Cape, 2 ; death, 3 

Sidney, Sir Philip, 197 

Smith, Sidnej^ his criticism of 
Mrs. Norton, 156 

Somerset, Duchess of, 4 ; her ap- 
pearance, 259 ; her daughter 
and sons, 259 

" Sons of the Duke of Buccleuch, 
The," 172 

" Sorrows of Rosalie, The, A Tale, 
with Other Poems," 21-23 

Stanhope, Colonel Leicester, 81 

Stanley, Lady, 258 

Stevenson, Pearse, " A Plain 
Letter to the Lord Chancellor 
on the Law of Custody of In- 
fants," 152-154 ; criticism on, 

155 

Stirling-Maxwell, Lady Anna, her 
marriage, 284 ; appearance, 
284 ; death, 293 

Stirling-Maxwell, Sir William, 2 ; 
his " Annals of the Artists in 
Spain," 215 ; friendship with 
Mrs. Norton, 215 ; characteris- 
tics, 216, 262 ; epitaph, 216 ; 
appearance, 216; alterations'of 
his house at Keir, 224 ; mar- 
riage, 284 ; succeeds to the title 



312 



INDEX 



and estates, 284 ; death of his 

first wife, 293 ; marriage with 

Mrs. Norton, 296 ; death, 296 
Storey's Gate, 17 ; alterations, 39 
" Stuart of Dunleath," 218-222 
Sugden, Edward, his opposition 

to the Infant Custody Bill, 145 
Sumner, Charles, his impressions 

of Mrs. Norton, 154 
Sutherland, Duchess of, 262 ; her 

appearance, 262 ; death, 286 
Sutherland, Duke of, his support 

of the Infant Custody Bill, 146 
Switzerland, 287 

Talfourd, Thomas Noon, serjeant- 
at-law, 94 ; his motion on the 
Infant Custody Bill, 137, 139 ; 
his poetical drama Ion, 139 

Taylor, Sir Henry, on the appear- 
ance of Mrs. Brinsley Sheridan, 
202 ; on the change in Mrs. 
Norton, 217 

Tennyson, Alfred, 194 

Thackeray, W. M., 196 ; his lec- 
tures on " The Four Georges," 
258 

Thellusson, Miss, 260 

Thesiger, Sir Frederick, 94 

Thrupps, their case against Mr. 
Norton, 227 

Thynne, Lord Henry, 57 

Times, The, article on the repeal 
of the Corn Laws, 198 ; letters 
in, 233-235 ; notice in, 287 

Tindal, Lord Chief Justice, 93 ; 
the Melbourne case tried before, 

93 

" To my Piano," 79 

Tolstoi, 144 ; in London, 145 

Trelawny, Mr., his character- 
istics, 84 ; admiration for Mrs. 
Norton, 84 ; letters from Mrs. 
Shelley, 136 

Trollope, Anthony, 285 

" Twilight," 175 

" Undying One, The," 23-26 ; 
dedication of, 25 ; second edi- 
tion, 37 

Vaughan, Miss Margaret, her re- 



lations with George Norton, 75, 
yy ; entrusted with the super- 
vision of his sons, 99 ; death, 

lOI 

Venice, 253, 296 

Victoria, Queen, her accession, 
127 ; friendship with Lord Mel- 
bourne, 127 ; coronation, 145 ; 
her reception of Mrs. Norton, 
178 ; grief at the loss of Lord 
Melbourne from office, 179 

Victorine, the play, 217 

Vignj'-, Alfred de, 257 

Villiers, Charles, votes in favour 
of the Infant Custody Bill, 145 

" Voice from the Factories," iii 

Wales, Prince of, " The Child of 

the Islands " addressed to, 185 
Wellington, Duke of, 32 
Westminster County Court, trial 

in, 227-232 ; verdict, 232 
Westmorland, Lady, 5 
Wey, the, 9 
Wiesbaden, 276 
" Wife and Woman's Reward, 

The," 60, 70-75 
William IV., 25, 81 note ; holds a 

Drawing-room, 37 ; his death, 

127, 139 

Williamson, his terra-cotta bust 
of Mrs. Norton, 296 

Wilson, Mr., 3 

Wimbledon, 259 

Winchester, Dean of, i 

Wollstonecraft, Mary, 136 

Woman's rights, views on, 149 

Wonersh, 7, 8 

Wonersh Park, 8, 83, 91 

Wood, Mrs. Henry, " East 
Lynne," 290 

Wordsworth, William, his poem 
" The Last of the Nortons," 9 

Woronzow, Catherine, 197 

Worthing, 55 

Wortley, Lady Emeline, 176 

Wynford, Lord, 121 ; his oppo- 
sition to the Infant Custody 
Bill, 146 

York, Frederick, Duke of, 2. 4 



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